Slashdot Mirror
Nick Petrely responds to Metcalfe
Aleatoric
writes "In his response to Bob Metcalfe's article, Nick
Petrely says he'll eat his column if Bob doesn't change his
mind about Linux within two years.
" Good column- describes the usual MS FUD tactics
and why it wont' work this time.
Metcalf is still right. The question is not whether Linux or WinXXXX wins; the question is, what will replace both of them?
Unix is old stuff; generally works well, fairly easily repaired, very configurable, not too easy to use. WinXXXX is easy to use, generally works OK (but not great), poorly configurable, unrepairable. At the server, the various Unices can make substantial inroads on market share, because maintainability, configurability, and availability are priorities. On the desktop, its usability and breadth of applications. WinXXXX is going to win that battle for awhile.
The next real surge in computer utility will come with the next generation OS. There are a lot of interesting OS research projects out there, but little of it is making its way into "production" OSes, open-source or otherwise. The Linux community has a certain conservatism which seems to inhibit absorption of new things, which is why I expect the next big OS to evolve outside of both MS and the Linux community.
>Anyone who complains loudly makes a fool out of himself, IMNSHO.
And of course no one ever complains loudly here on Slashdot.
Foolish, foolish mortal. Microsoft is EVIL. Therefore all of their products are INFERIOR. How dare you bring LOGIC into the Sacred Halls of /.?
/.'er, you have to be in lock-step with everyone else, to wit:
It's so sad to see someone who focuses on how stable his OS is, what he can get done with it, and how it feels. As we all know, performance, ease of installation, ease of use, and server benchmarks should be ignored when they do not demonstrate the Evils of Microsoft.
To be a true
LINUX RULZ! WINDOZE SUX!
"Finally, sir, have you no shame?"
I think we're all in agreement here that it would take a climactic event to totally halt the development of Linux.
Indeed it would. A few things that would cut way back on Linux development:
1. A bit tax on the Internet. Why should tax money it's competitors pay be used against them.
2. Corporations tightening up on wasted time by their programming staffs. Why should companies pay their programmers to diddle around in projects that aren't on the agenda as revenue producing projects.
3. An end to the classic "Internet." Linux development is heavily subsidized by the mere existence of Usenet, IRC, and various other Internet technologies, which are based on the old notion that the Internet is "free" and available to the government and it's contractors.
4. Trojans, hackers, and other goons. Companies that let employees install Linux on machines all over the place in an anarchic fashion are asking for serious trouble. Unsecured Linux boxes are nests for criminals to lodge their code into for further attacks on other parts of the corporate infrastructure. This in particular is going to get Linux banned in companies all over the place.
A Linux machine on the company network is in itself somewhat of a trojan horse. People joke about it all the time in the Linux community. IS managers don't laugh at that kind of humor.
5. Intellectual Property Issues. The GPL has never seen it's day in court. When some legal precedents are set, we will see how strong it is. In particular, many people who have contributed to the Linux effort work for companies at a day job. Many of them are subject to agreements with their employer that prohibits them from contributing code to non-company efforts. As the litigation picks up (it will, when Linux becomes more than a 1-2% phenomenon) the Linux kernel will start looking like swiss cheese, with sections that are pulled because the code belongs to the company a hacker worked for when producing it. Lots of fun will then emerge as people have to fill those holes with new cleanroom code.
These points need to be considered by any commercial entity seriously considering putting a significant part of it's infrastructure on Linux. They'll be thinking about stuff like this. Don't forget that with Microsoft all they have to do is budget it in.
First....
Extra bonus points for Mr. Petreley for the Ethernet slam. Classic.
What Metcalfe misses of course is that Linux is powerful, reliable, efficient, getting easy to use, and *evolvable*.
Linux evolves just like science evolves -- just like, ahem, computer science. Despite all the micro vs macro kernel arguments I don't think that microkernels ever "won". They never "won" the way quicksort won vs. bubblesort.
In any case, the Linux POSIX API is UNIX, but the architecture is a significantly evolved version. The wonder of UNIX is that the original idea was elegant enough that a limited number of thoughtful embellishments allowed it to grow into a beautifully crafted, organic thing.
Maybe its not QNX, but maybe its more than good enough.
Jim Burnes
jburnes@iss.net
Quite frankly, I don't want Linux to smash Windows, or the MacOS. I want the various parties to concentrate on themselves, and interoperability. Linux isn't for everyone, neither is Windows, or the MacOS. Making progress on interoperability should be the real goal.
:)
;) everything I want it to, and does it responsively.
/dev/null, I don't war about OSes
After not using Windows for a long time, I decided to install Windows 2k Pro on one of my (linux) laptop partitions. I must say its rather refreshing to use Windows 2k, it's been very fast, abd stable for me. Nice UI, there aren't wizards everywhere (yet they still exist, damnit), and it seems responsive, I have had apps crash a few times, and none have taken down the OS itself. Internet Explorer doesn't constantly crash and disappear when I'm loading a page I didn't get to bookmark. No one can deny the Linux versions of Netscape are very shoddy pieces of work (this has nothing to do with Linux, it has to do with Netscape). When I just need to get stuff done with no BS, I find it refreshing to boot into Windows 2k and just get it done.
What do I think is lacking in Win2k? UNIX! Or rather everything great about it, the powerful scripting, the open programming interfaces, the level of control you have over your computer. To be honest, since Win2k is closed source, I do not know if my computer is sending Microsoft information I don't want it to, I don't know what's REALLY going on, when Microsoft tells my browser to download this nifty new component.
The built-in Encrypted File System in Win2k is 40-bit (upgradable to 128-bit) and shoddy. I don't trust that it's secure, because of the way the EFS works...automatically de/encrypting whenever someone with the right privileges clicks on it. And I could go on and on about this
Using Windows 2k, I am bluntly reminded of how much more work KDE and GNOME have to do, before they can even begin to truly compete with the Windows interface. The downside to such a great interface is bloat...Windows 2k is undoubtedly bloated outrageously, but on my 192mb PII 366 system its not reall noticed, it does (almost, its not UNIX after all
So instead of starting religious wars...{I mean Linux and Windows are JUST OSes after all, there are many more serious things to war about)...let's concentrate on interoperability, and getting our favourite OSes up to snuff. It would be a great world if all OSes could share data and services seamlessly with each other, without much tinkering. Instead of trying to drill the pipedream that KDE is as polished as the Windows UI, start helping the KDE project, give them coherent and useful suggestions.
It must be greatly disheartening for a KDE or GNOME developer to look out into the masses, and seeing users (people who arent even involved in the coding of the respective projects) bickering, and evangelizing their work...
Calm down, concentrate your efforts into improving free software, or on the Windows side, auditing security, etc. To quote a great meth addict/police beat toy: "Can't we all just get along?"
send flames to
I can't rember who said this and I'm too lazy to go grep the linux fortune cookie file but any ways. The quote goes somthing like "Linux is user friendly, it is just not IDOT friendly"
I think this applys very well here, just because you are too stupid to set somthing up right, you blame the product. Linux runs great on my system, it boots up faster the Windows and we won't even talk about which one is more stable. It not linux's fault that you can't setup X or netscape worth crap let me tell you that buy editing your prefrences in Netscape you can turn up that font size. But by reading the rest of this message the only think that I can't suggest you did that would rectify your situation is to shoot yourself.
KDE isn't a distrubution. I'm going to assume that you know that. But then again, if your telling him to switch to KDE your probably a idot and don't know that. KDE? KDE has got the be the ugliest, most unstable peice of trash I have seen in my life besides windows. Windows, even looks better. KDE looks like somthing that was in my toliet the other damn. I'm not saying it dosen't have its upsides such as being very user friendly but please for a man who is complaing about how his X desktop looks, KDE is going to make him hate linux. I think it would be best for him to use Enlightnement and if he really want to use a office/desktop enviroment which is actaully what KDE is he sould use gnome. Its a hell of alot more stable and infinitly better looking. If you don't think its better looking you haven't tried out all the themes.
Oh never mind, I guess that was a joke and that line is suppose to be part of your sig file. KDE is the ugliest think I have every seen in my life, and god knows I have seen some ugly things since I goto public school. KDE is also very unstable, why don't your get a real desktop enviroment like gnome. Its so much better looking, more stable and much more configuable then KDE. And gnome is a much cooler name too.
This is my sig line
BOY! When I was your age I had been using linux for two years. I can't program, I just know how to read, and I decided to get of my lazy ass and learn linux because I figured it couldn't be any worse then Windows. People like linux because it does look better the windows, you just can't use the preinstalled setup with the window manager. Just like everytime I install windows on my machine to use my scanner, I always change the coloring scheme to Rainy day, delete the recycle bin, move all the folders such as games, system tools etc out of applications and move them to the main programs menu. I would do more but I can't.
Your problem is your just plain lazy, and your a windows whore.
Oh and I am now 17 and I look back and say damn, back in the day I didn't know shit about linux, but I'm glad I'm stuck with it because now I don't have to reboot at least once and day. I also like not wasting 100 megs for my Operating System. I can only imagine how many megs Windows2k takes up.
And I don't really think another win9X release really counts. In the time it will take for NT to have a desktop/home model(what w2k was planned to be), linux will have had a long time to grow. For MS's alledged "betting the farm" on NT the stakes have been fairly low.
I found the Ethernet comment at the end quite amusing. Mocking your opponent while making a worthwhile observation earns you style points.
Yeah? Well screw you pal. I, for one, would use OS/2 on PPC, if such a thing existed. Ah well at least PPC owners got OSX now...
how about 'ill eat a cup full of my own steaming hot semen' that would be alot more interesting
What you do in your spare time is your own business Sparky
Or:
"Dependable Technology"
"Productive Technology"
Why bother adding a history-element to it? Since time is insufferable, making time part of the buzz is a losing battle.
Because of time, New Technology isn't.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Unix was not based on MULTICS. It was based on some of the *ideas* in MULTICS --- but MULTICS itself was tightly bound to the hardware it ran on, a very nonstandard machine whose like no longer exists.
-- brandon s. allbery, sysadmin @ cmu electrical & computer engineering "Think, youth, THINK!"
I always love it when MS includes something in their GUI to slow the user down.
Yea, I really needed my Start menu to fade in when I click on it when it appears.
Sure, stuff like that looks cool, but I wouldnt exactly call the GUI enhancements in Win2kb3 (which I actually kind of like) "revolutionary".
As a relatively new Linux user (but a somewhat experienced shell user), I love some of the stuff you can do with Linux GUIs. Its not MacOS (GUI wise), but its still cool.
Maybe "Polymorphic Software" is the way to go -- just as all science today is built on the shoulders of the giants who came before, so shall all software be built upon a sturdy foundation. We use basic tools to build better tools, which in turn we use to develop better tools. Where else is this concept better illustrated than in the history of Linux (remember what Linux looked like in 1994? I still have nightmares... =) ).
UNIX has a solid, expandible base. Windows does not, unless you think that the autoexec.bat file is a really keen way to get things done.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Marquis of Queensbury rules... personally my money's on the Petrely kid.
Skip
--------------------
flifson@csdotuctdotacdotza
Skip
--------------------
"To create an apple pie from scratch,
you first must create the universe."
Actually, the Ethernet vs. Token Ring analogy is very useful in the Linux vs. Windows 2000 debate. Ethernet was an open protocol that anybody could license and tweak, while Token Ring was a proprietary standard that only IBM and a chosen few were allowed to sell and tweak. Similarly, Linux is an open OS that anybody can sell or tweak, while WIndows 2000 is a closed proprietary standard that only Microsoft is allowed to sell or tweak. Just as in the VHS vs. Beta war, where the open standard won, the open standard has an inherent advantage here. Unless Microsoft licenses the Windows source code to other companies for them to tweak and sell under their own brand name (Compaq Windows, anybody?), they will inevitably go the same way as Beta no matter how technically superior (or not).
To conclude: Whether or not Linux is technically superior (in some ways it is, in some ways it isn't) is irrelevant, as Petreley was trying to say. What it will come down to, in the end, is a matter of two questions:
a) does it do the job?
b) does it save us money?
Ethernet did the job, and saved money as vs. Token Ring, so it won. Petreley is saying that Linux meets those same criteria.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"Anonymous Coward"'s credentials are obvious. His credentials are that he has an office in Redmond on the campus of a large OS vendor and thus is automatically smarter than the rest of us (sarcasm intended).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I don't think so. According to benchmarks of MkLinux (the microkernel-based version),it was as much as 30% slower than 'monolithic' Linux. 'Real' BSD-based MACH showed the same kind of performance decrease as compared with 'real' BSD Unix.
What microkernels were supposed to do was not make kernel internals faster (a little thought will tell you that message-passing is more expensive than function calls), but, rather, make them easier to write, more reliable, and easier to write drivers for. Unfortunately their promise there does not seem to have worked. RMS, for example, blames HURD's stability problems on, quote, "a microkernel is harder to debug".
I personally still like a microkernel approach, and believe that if done properly it can get us the promised benefits (said after fighting a buggy device driver in Linux that managed to trash the TCP/IP stack even though it was a serial card driver... ARGH!). On the other hand, speed isn't one of those promised benefits, never has been, and to say so is silly.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
As a former Multician (University of Southwestern Lousiana, '81-'82), I probably have more insight than the original poster about the origins of Unix as a reaction to Multics. Multics was all about segments. There was no such thing as file i/o in Multics, everything was a segment, though you could query the filesystem database for the address of a segment (give it a name, out pops a segment ID). File I/O was emulated by reading and writing to segmented memory. Incidentally, all of this made process creation overhead so intense that Multics did not have the concept of pipes or of sending the output of one command into the input of another command. The output of Multics commands were meant to be human-readable anyhow, and would not have been useful for doing that. I could sometimes do something useful by outputing to a file and then running the result through TED to get rid of the human-readable stuff before feeding it into another program, but that was hardly a useful normal thing to do, not like "ls -l | more".
Unix, by contrast, was built around two concepts:
1) Everything is a file. Self explanatory.
2) Many small tools, chained together to make bigger tools. This was a direct reaction to the Multics philosophy of "put everything into one big tool".
These principles have been violated many times since the origins of Unix, but the fact remains that Unix had a design philosophy in the beginning, a design philosophy which can be read in the original Unix papers (go to your local library and I think it was what, CACM back in 1974?). Having a coherent design philosophy at the beginning is probably why it is still useful today, so many years later, whereas so many operating systems whose sole design principle was "put in whatever features we think will sell" have come and gone in the meantime.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I've read the research paper on L4 (have they put the actual code back up for download?). It states that there is a performance penalty of 2% to 5% running the Linux service as vs. running a monolithic Linux. If the rest of the promised benefits of microkernels pan out, I agree that this is a quite acceptable penalty and not one that I would get uptight about.
On the other hand, to say that microkernels are faster than monolithic kernels is sheer stupidity. Microkernels add another layer, and no matter how efficient (and L4 is pretty darned efficient), they still require code in execution paths within the kernel that monolithic kernels don't require.
As for Mach, you are correct that it was a research project, but it was cancelled not because it was slow, but, rather, because its grant ran out. That is the typical fate of research projects -- they get cancelled because they're old hat and no longer producing research papers, not because they're lousy (and Mach IS lousy -- Linus commented once that Mach was the Emacs of microkernels, with everything but the kitchen sink in there! Linus likes L4, BTW, though not enough to dump the notion of a monolithic kernel).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
glibc is very very close to POSIX compliance.
True, Linux has never been submitted to a standards committee to certify it, but that means about as much as getting a college degree after you've done the coursework (I was just as smart ten minutes before I was granted my degree, as I was ten minutes afterwards). Linux has done the coursework, just hasn't bothered applying for the certificate.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
TummyX, here's two features that Windows 2000 will _never_ have.
1. Free (as in beer. downloaded RedHat 6.0 the day it was release - for free)
2. Free (as in speech - open source, if you don't think this is the most issue in computer software don't call yourself a programmer, because you aren't)
If you want to go out and spend $300 for that Windows 2000 closed source CD at your local Walmart, please go ahead. Windows seems perfect for you. Linux will have in short order all those features you just listed, if it doesn't already. Others it already does much much better (terminal server != multiuser OS, for instance)
I would please ask however that you now stop trolling on slashdot trying to make yourself look like an complete asshole, because its working.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Posted by My_Favorite_Anonymous_Coward:
I always thought LOL is Lord oh lord until someone went out their way to write it down... what, what?
CY
Posted by Synsthe:
> IE 5.0 has been rock solid.
Not to justify your trolling, but this statement cannot be backed up with fact, therefore your whole argument loses credibility.
I used IE 5.0 on my windows system for a short period of time; yup, it's faster, and yup, it supports more of the w3c specs than before, and yup, it had some new features. It also had all it's old features, such as crashing on occasion (for no apparent reason a few times, I wasn't even at the computer), and randomly bitching that I wasn't online, and had to connect to view any pages, while I would be surfing just fine in netscape, would be on IRC with no lag, downloading newsgroups articles..
I've also heard from a few of my friends running the product that they've had the same problems.
Let's use a recent and, although rather harmless exploit, still an exploit. One of IE5's new features, the favicon.ico - c'mon, can't they think far enough ahead to foresee such problems? How many people work on each product? 2? 3? I'd hope it wasn't honestly that little of a group. =)
Windows products that are in Beta are notoriously buggy, and problematic. Wasn't 95 supposed to be named 94? I think we all know of that. =) Some of their products that have been released as stable have had just as soon after, so many bug patches and fixes released, one would think they were still in beta. Windows 2000 might be different, but when you've made yourself a bad track record to begin with, you've got a lot of work to do to prove you're changing.
From recent events, I don't see any changes happening over there.
Linux advocates spreading FUD? Heheh.. yeah, it happens all the time. Slashdot is a great place to find people doing that; behind the scenes, due to their anon posting (which I personally think was the least brightest idea on the planet), I'm sure you'll find a lot of those Linux FUD spreaders are anti-Linux campaigners in desguise.
Yup, we've got problems though; distro wars, infighting, etc. It happens all the time. It's a big problem we seem to have, but atleast we're fighting over a decent product.
--
Mark Waterous
http://linux.revision3.com/ (Official opening, July 15th)
--
Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)
Posted by Synsthe:
>You are essentially saying no AC posts are valid.
Good for him! I completely agree. AC posts aren't valid; they're space filler. Anybody who can't be troubled to post their name, or even a nick and email for that matter, doesn't have an opinion obviously. They're just that, cowards. =)
And you will notice most of the flaming, pro/anti what not does come from AC's.. most of the people with names seem to actually put some thought into their posts, though I can't say that applies to everybody.
>How mature. You're just as guilty of labeling as >those jerks in MS marketing. those jerks in MS
>marketing.
Yup. Human nature, kiddo, everybody does it. Get used to it.
--
Mark Waterous
http://linux.revision3.com/
--
Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)
Posted by Synsthe:
>Windows will die.
>
>Like a bug.
Here we have a case study in "Hello, I am either extremely uninformed, or talking out of my..".
Don't mean to be crude in my wording there, but frankly, you are talking out of your backside. Windows won't die; not unless Bill Gates up and dissolves the company (Do you really think that's going to happen?).
As far as I'm concerned, Linux isn't going anywhere either, except for further evolution. You're missing the point entirely if you think Linux was made, or is worked on now, only to demolish MS. That was not, nor is, the intention at all.
Both will survive, and I hope they both thrive. The market for anything, software, and the likes, stagnates without competition. Enter the competition, you have people going head to head, trying to outdo the other, continually advancing, continually improving on their old product. MS may get it right one day, but as they continue to try to squash and destroy Linux, instead of simply learning from it, as Linux is learning from MS, they're going to lag behind.
This by no means, means they're going to dissapear, and if you think they will, you're living in dreamland, along with Bob, and the rest of them. =)
--
Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)
Posted by Synsthe:
>Man what's the deal with this Linux? I can't even
>view half the websites I usually go to with this
>crappy Communicator web browser. And my desktop
>looks shitty ( hence turd )
So, because you haven't a clue what you're doing, suddenly it all sucks?
It's sad to see, but Windows is making idiots out of people if the above is any example. "Let's go breed some more laziness guys.."
--
Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)
Posted by Synsthe:
>>so I have the choice of totally uninstalling IE
>>or trying to get version 5 to do work.
>Seems like a nobrainer to me.
Actually not quite. Ever tried to uninstall IE5? It's not an easy task. Go under add/remove programs and select IE 5. Notice there's absolute no option to uninstall it? There's just options to "fix it" and another I forget.
Go to the directory it's installed in, and you notice there is _no_ uninstall information - closer look reveals that the uninstall information is in a hidden directory that any average user will never know exists.
Great job guys, next thing you know Office, and other such applications won't be able to be removed once you have them on a windows system.
--
Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)
My experience does not match yours. Netscape works fine for me, and that includes even using the G2 realvideo player to watch the new Weird Al video. Yes, it is certainly true that many plugins don't exist for Linux/Netscape, but I can't stand the sites that use them even in Windows where the plugins are there. They are generally not worth it and I find myself disabling the plugins to stop the annoyances.
And when it comes to looks, small fonts are seen as more desirable by some, myself included. I really don't like the default settings in windows/netscape or windows/ie because they use these garishly huge fonts that end up making one browser window eat up your whole screen. I like being able to have two windows up side-by-side and that means small fonts. But whichever way your preference goes, disliking defaults is a silly reason to bag a system when the defaults are user-configurable options.
And I see about 19 variable-width fonts and 8 fixed-width fonts in my Netscape font dialog.
Mostly what I like about the Unix model in general (from which Linux inherits a lot of its 'feel'), is that there are lots of things that are configurable. Although they might not be easy to configure, the list of things you can change is bigger than in Windows. For example, by altering the 'X resource Database' file that comes with netscape (netscape.ad) I have picked different fonts for the main menus and button labels, and changed the colors so that the toolbar panel is green, the main menu is black, and so on. Yes, this is hardly simple, but it is very powerful. It's like being able to change registry settings in a system where there are actual english comments in there to explain everything.
So yes, I *do* use it because of the look and feel.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I stopped reading right there. This is a false statement, and since your article seems to be based on this premise, it is pointless to go any further.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
What exactly does Metcalfe have to believe in order for Peterley to avoid chewing paper on that fateful New Year's Day? He doesn't quite make the terms clear.
Mind you, I'm pretty sure that Metcalfe will concede that he's changed his mind, but I like to see these things made concrete...
--
Employ me! Unix,Linux,crypto/security,Perl,C/C++,distance work. Edinburgh UK.
Xenu loves you!
KDE 2.0 is a vast improvement over KDE 1.x, and will have an integrated office suite.
--
Get xfstt from Metalab. /usr/ttfonts. /usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt --sync /usr/X11R6/bin/xfstt &
Copy whatever TrueType fonts you want into
Run
Run
Problem solved.
And try KDE.
--
I have noticed the attention this benchmark is getting and all the improvements that are being made to kick-butt the next time, but...
Microsoft can stick a few dozen top-notch kernel hackers in the same building with a few dozen top-notch web-server developers and give them as much equipment as they need, including hardware debuggers and protocol analyzers. Pay them reasonably well and promise a 100% bonus for beating Linux and they WILL squeeze every bit of performance out of IIS and NT.
Even MS can't take this approach to everything at once. Even if they had the money, the different groups would be stepping all over each other. But if Bill identifies a narrow goal and throws a few million dollars at it, it will be done.
If our goal is to beat MS then we have to play to OUR strengths. The invisible Open Source hand will put a few people on the Mindcraft case and I'm sure the results will be impressive. But our advocates need to emphasize that, even while our web server performance improves, Gnome/KDE continue to make strides. The documentation gets better. And so on.... Linux isn't about serving static web pages or any specific benchmarks.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Petreley's comment that Microsoft will try to refocus the argument to something it can win is right on the money. IMHO that's what this Mindcraft thing is about.
We'd do well to avoid raising a specific metric (like serving static web pages) to being somehow more important than all the other aspects of Linux. The advantage that MS (and any Cathedral) has is the ability to throw a lot of coordinated resources at a specific problem. If we buy into the idea that a certain contest defines which platform is better, Microsoft can make sure it wins that particular contest. Imagine: "Linux community devastated as Windows wins web server benchmark five years in a row."
The strength of Linux is thousands of people making incremental improvements in all sorts of areas. The distributions are making things easier to use. Researchers are working on distributed processing. The kernel hackers are working on SMP. Systems administrators everywhere are working on admin tools. It adds up to an operating system that evolves in a million different ways to meet the needs of real users.
That's not to say that we can't beat MS at serving static pages. As long as MS keeps trying to win all the battles they probably won't win any. But if they can succeed in narrowing the debate to "if Windows is better at X then Linux must suck" they WILL do whatever is needed to make Windows better at X.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
The "final" beta of Windows 2000 was released two or three times.
Until it comes out, you can use the free font server xfstt to use your TTFs. You don't have to move them at all, just mount your Windows partition and tell xfstt to look in your windows/fonts directory.
How do I know it works? Because I read your message in Arial.
It's not a simple matter of comparing high load Ethernet versus high load Token Ring and concluding that Token Ring is the superior technology. Both solutions have their pros and cons. Token Ring for example has multiple points of failure - each link in the ring must be up for the entire network to work - something which isn't true for switched Ethernet.
Ethernet is a suitable solution for low to medium bandwidth networks. Token Ring is better for slightly higher bandwidth networks. For extremely low bandwidth and extremely high bandwidth networks you look towards completely different solutions. Ethernet is by no means a "cheap and nasty" solution to the problem. In fact it's a fairly clever design, with the occasional warts that all technology has, based on well known and analysed theoretical networking principles.
I'd personally have no problem seeing a head-to-head race between IIS and linux/apache(roxen,zeus,whatever), and I'd expect IIS users wouldn't either. If nothing else, it's forcing the parties involved to shoot for excellence in thier code areas, rather than merely mill about over mediocrity. Well, linux tends to keep moving in the excellence area, but a nudge from outside doesn't hurt. ;)
More benchmarks! Lets see NFS performance tests, deeper SMB tests, every other kind of test that can be performed to show us where the weeknesses lie, and what strengths we already enjoy. Given the fact that linuxers will take a temporary loss as motivation to win and will quickly turn a negative publicity tidbit into a positive force for change, I say it's ALL good.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
My eldest boy is 8, and I'm consistantly amazed at the things he does with his junky ol' P5-120 for someone his age. His younger brother is coming along nicely too, at the age of 5. I simultaneously shudder and fondly dream of what marvels thier brains will contain in the upcoming decade.
Metcalfe is owed props for the ethernet technology, but he's basically turned into a grumpy old man who shakes his shillelagh at the world whenever something comes along he can't understand fully or simply doesn't like.
To steal a line from the Who: hope I die before I get (that) old.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
I consider Windows 2000 to be an absolutely amazing products cause of it's choke full of features, as well as remaning stable and fast.
Remaning stable and fast? Window hasn't been fast since 3.11 and has never been stable. I have never even heard of a Windows98 machine being up for more than a month.
Speed is something Linux still needs to improve on (I'm talking about scalability here, not on a 386 w/2mb ram).
Speed is something all OSes need to work on, but besides multi-processor machines Linux is faster than Windows across the board. As for multi-processor multi-Intel is a waste. If you're going to foot that sort of cash you should go with a single proc DEC or a multi processor Sparc and if you get the Sparc you should run Solaris, not Windows or Linux on it. Linux is a great OS, but it niether has nor claims to have high availability or high end scalability. Windows doesn't have these either. Face it, you can't even pull a single processor from an Intel machine with out it failing.
Stability, maybe Linux is stable for the moment, X leaves much to be desired tho. Maybe we'll see that in ver4.
I admit that XFree is terrible instable. I rarely keep it up longer than two or three months of reasonable usage, but this is still better than Win98. Maybe 2000 is better, I don't know. I'll believe it when I see it.
-ACPI Power management
-Hibernation mode (dump mem to harddisk)
-On Now (with hibernation mode) (20second boot)
Though I can't vouch for it I think Linux has ACPI managment. It definately does not have hibernation (which both of the second two are, niether would benefit you much with out the other), but I've never found them that useful. I always used either standby or shutdown when I had a laptop that supported hibernation. Maybe it will be a big advantage, if so we'll probably see it in Linux in the future.
-IE5.1 integration. Stable, fast, and NEVER crashes (for me anyway) - some people - interestingly enough, linux users, seem to somehow make it crash.
There are two parts to this: the first (integration) is a mistake, not a feature. I don't want my web browser integrated with my OS, I'd rather have a choice. As to the second part (stability) it is a bugfix, not a feature, and it sounds incomplete. The reason Linux users are the ones who crash IE may be because Linux users aren't used to the way you use IE so they try something it doesn't expect and so it crashes. Regardless, you should not be able to crash an application, period. I admit that I can crash Netscape for Linux, but I think Netscape is a really shoddy product. I hope Mozilla does better.
-IE5 (explorer) lets you view ftp and web sites just like any other folder on your local system of NFS/SMB share.
You mean Win2000 causes you to view your local system and shared drives as web sites. I don't want to. My directory structure is quite different from the WWW and I don't want them supported as the same.
-You can start every explorer (file and web) in a new process now if you wish. Shouldn't have a reason to taken down your task bar with explorer if you decide to terminate it. I've never had that problem with Windows 2000 though.
This also is a bugfix, not a feature.
-Windows Common control open/save dialog enhanced and supports loading & saving from/to URLs (like above). Since almost all apps use Common Controls, including Java ones, it'll work with almost all your apps.
This is a nice feature. Emacs has had it for years hopefully Gnome and KDE will have it soon.
-Offline internet and lan folders. (Network shares remain valid even when you're disconnected).
This means that you are caching content, which you could do with Squid or a similar caching system on Linux. I sure hope you can turn this off, because it's wasting an awful lot of hard drive.
-USB, IEE1394, DVD, Video Capture.
USB is rudimentarily supported by Linux, I'll care more about this when usefull USB devices appear. Firewire is not supported, there are practically no devices on FireWire, and it's slower than SCSI any way. DVD is not supported because HSVs don't release thier stats to Linux, this is a problem that I hope goes away when Linux becomes more popular. Video Capture is supported by Linux.
-Auto personalising menus.
I don't know what this is
-New Management console - control your computer and/or entire network from one console that's 'Pluggable' with COM objects.
You mean like linuxconf?
-Telnet server (for legacy guys).
-Terminal server (for legacy guys).
I bet these are as flexible as their Linux equivelents right? They allow you to modify any system item? They allow exporting of graphical programs to remote servers?
-COM+ and Transaction server integration.
This doesn't affect Linux since it doesn't use COM+, so I'm not sure why you included it.
-Computer manager allows you to tweak every little bit of Windows.
Every bit? I want to turn off IE and the GUI because I don't use them.
-IIS5, ASP support with VB, Java, Perl scripting
Wow it finally comes with a web server. It still isn't as flexible as Apache though.
-Windows Scripting Host for automating windows with scripting languages.
You mean like the shells, Perl, and Python? Windows has a real long way to go before catching up to Linux with regard to scripting
-Extremely refined UI. Right click on anything and you'll get a context menu. Drag and drop anything on everything. (Gnome and KDE still need a lot of work on this).
This is true. Linux does have a lot of catching up to do before it catches Windows GUI in terms of usability and consistency. I give it another year. It has caught up a lot in the last one.
-Semi-Transparent windows support inbuilt into Win32.
Um, Linux had this first.
-SMP suppoirt for up to 32 processors (and they are actually efficiently utilized, unlike linux).
See my comments on SMP at the top. This is not relavent to most users and in fact most likely slows the system down on single processor implementation.
-New Windows 2000 install API - Auto repairing.
...basically you can't destroy your system by deleting or overwriting vital DLLs/vxds etc, they are automatically recovered on deletion.
This is a poor fix to the problem that it's too easy to destroy files in Windows. If they had a decent protection system this would be unneeded.
-New NTFS5 file system supports cluster compression and encryption (and ofcourse security etc).
NT5 is not secure. Linux is not secure. Don't claim they are. If you have specialty FS concerns (encryption or compression) then you should use a specialty FS (GFS, ext2 with compression, Encrypted FS), except that you have no choice in filesystems when it comes to Windows...
-New Kerberos security model (developed early last decade at MIT).
This isn't new and has been in Linux for a while.
-DirectX 7 and OpenGL.
Linux has OpenGL and DirectX is not standard.
-Win32 SoundAPI goes thru DirectX, legacy applications and new applications will all work be able to use the sound card at once - without being aware of DirectX or modification.
This is a change to the soundAPI, not a feature.
;).
-New generation Plug'n'Play support. Literally, just plug and play. Drivers install automatically - no reboots
Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah, Comdex, right before I saw a big blue screen. Even if it does work it still requires a reboot to change hardware information, this shouldn't be needed. I hate the fact that to change my gateway on a Windows machine I have to reboot. There is no excuse for that sort of behavior.
-New indexing with a cut down version of sql sever for fast file searches (which is done from the same IE band as web searches now).
This encumbers the filesystem and isn't really all that useful. I could implement a program that does this on relavent sections of my harddrive if I chose to, but I wouldn't use it enough to justify the expense.
:)).
-Shadowed mouse (ok, ok, but it just looks cool
Wow.... Does it look as cool as gtk+ themes?
And basically, every part of windows is pluginable more than ever because of the nature of Explorer now. Desktop is an ActiveX container, explorer file listings is an ActiveX container etc etc. Ofcourse you have to be a programmer and know what you're doing.
There are a whole lot of things one can do with Linux if one is a programmer and knows what they are doing...
Basically Windows 2000 is your all round OS.
There is no such thing. Windows is not realtime. Windows cannot run in 128k of RAM. Windows doesn't have high-availability. Windows doesn't have a capabilities security model. Windows cannot be used on high end hardward (UE10k anyone), and even if it could you wouldn't want to.
And fit ready for consumer as well as commercial use.
Beta3 IS the final beta - I don't know what all that crap other people were going on about haven't there already been heaps of 'final betas'. MS have always had a 3 beta cycle. And there has only been one beta3 - it took a while, but it's here non the less.
I'll believe that when I see it on shelves. I can't count the times that I've heard "X is the last beta" from Microsoft.
;).
I've prolly missed out heaps of other features but all of this is from the top of my head, and in the order they came out
I count 4 items in that list that are features and aren't in Linux and all of them could be in Linux soon. So Microsoft better hope you missed some...
Windows 2000 has many little bits and pieces which makes it much more productive for the average person than Linux. And even for the advid programmer like me. I like the little bits which make my life easier. Ofcourse I still like command lines, but not for everything. Little time savers in Windows are much appreciated, and I can see where Microsoft put it's millions into GUI research. And I'll look forward to when MS Research's natural language engine gets integrated into Windows. (BTW text to speech is part of Windows 2000, and it reads dialog boxes etc).
Ofcourse, when natural language gets integrated into Windows, people will say "bah", I'd rather type a couple of lines than just "say" "computer, search on the internet for traces of that operating system called linux".
Have you ever used text to speech or natural language? Except in specific cases of blind persons it is useless. They both take forever as you can read and type faster than you can speak. Plus they are completely useless in a buisness environment. As for the GUI, yeah, it does have some nice features, but not enough to make up for it's utter lack of a commandline. And those features will probably be in Linux soon.
The primary speed problems with microkernels have had to do primarily with implementation. Don't forget that macrokernels have have decades to develop, while microkernels have primarily been in the experimental stage for the last ten years.
MkLinux (and NeXtStep) were based on Mach2.5, which uses several tricks to decrease the performance impact of microkernels. For the most part, it made Mach resemble a macrokernel more than a microkernel, but it was fast enough to allow NeXtStep to run on a 68040 25Mhz with an advanced GUI (with very good performance, I might add).
Mach 2.0 was an awful dog, probably because it was the first complete microkernel design for Mach. Mach 3.0 introduced several new concepts, but wasn't optimized for performance. Mach 4, although still slower than macrokernels, brought the performance difference to within a few percentage ponts.
The Mach design, however, was primarily experimental (despite its usage in many products), and the project was cancelled in the mid-90's (forget exactly when, though) Mach 4 continued to be developed by team at the UofUtah??, but dropped that in favor of developing a new microkernel based on the lessons learned from Mach.
The L4 microkernel has been designed with performance in mind (as well as easier programming), and is faster than Linux right now. However, it still doesn't handle multiple servers now (AFAIK), but does have a Linux server so it can emulate a Linux machine. Hurd will probably adapt it in place of Mach once the kernel becomes more stable and they feel comfortable mucking around with the internals.
The ancestor organization to the KGB (I forget the name) was set up under Lenin - and the Gulag started then too. "Enemies of the People" (i.e. anybody the Party didn't like) were tried, and sent to the Gulag or shot right from the beginning of the Soviet state - and this patteren has been seen for all other examples of Communist rule.
Stalin, who was far more paranoid, just did a lot more in this area; looking for and removing potential rivals to his power - in the Party, the Army, etc., in addition to terrorizing the general populace.
But it started right from the beginning - don't be a "useful idiot" and sugarcoat what Lenin did.
--
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
There is one thing that really disturbs me about Windows 2000, and that is that it requires a 300MHz or higher processor. What kind of baggage is it carrying that it requires a processor that fast? Didn't Microsoft tune the operating system? How will this affect future benchmark comparisons?
I was wondering the exact same thing. It also seems there are many more posts that are pro-M$. Kinda makes one wonder.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Webster's dictionary defines Socialism and Capitalism as:
Socialism: 1: Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods. 2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property. b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. 3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between captialism and communism and distinguished by unequal distributions of goods and pay according to work done.
Capitalism: an economic system characterized by private or corporate of capital goods, by investments determined by private decisions rather than by state control, and by prices, production, and distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
Both Socialism and Capitalism are economic systems. The difference between them is that in a capitalist system capital is owned privately, whereas capital is owned by the state in a socialist economy. If a country owns a factory, that doesn't make them capitalist, it means they're industrialized.
I hope this clears any confusion on the matter.
-Chris Andreasen
I think the relation between software and economic systems that so often pops up here on Slashdot is comparing ownership of software to ownership of capital. Capital is privately owned in a capitalist system. However, the economic system to which Open-Source Software is most commonly compared to is communism, not socialism. All property is collectively owned in a communist state, but owned by the government in a socialist state.
"Evolution and natural selection" aren't always present in a capitalist system. Take Windows for example (keeping with anti-MS attitude so prevalent on Slashdot). Natural selection involves survival of the fittest, and if that were the case the Amiga or OS/2 would have stomped out Windows long ago. And as for evolution, you would expect Windows to have proper preemptive multitasking and protected memory management by now, wouldn't you? Every other OS seems to have evolved to that stage.
-Chris Andreasen
...
-Chris Andreasen
You can change the resolutions on the fly with X. Use Ctrl+Alt+Plus and Ctrl+Alt+Minus (Plus and Minus on the keypad, that is). You just can't change resolution on the fly. Windows 95 couldn't either. You had to reboot. At least with X you only had to shutdown the X server, not do a complete reboot. I don't know if that's changed since Win98, since I don't use it.
Oops... I meant you can't change color depth on the fly. Sorry.
-Chris Andreasen
heh, well, you certainly gave up too easily... desktop sucks? take a look at this screenshot and tell me that's crap. btw, if u want to use TTF fonts in Linux, you need to compile and install freetype. Any idiot knows to go to http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/ for HOWTO's and whatnot.. that's how you get Linux help.. anyone that reads slashdot knows that, and if they don't, then they are an arrogant bafoon. well gee, there ya go.. i just gave 2 urls that prove that you're just not a hard core computer user.
Hmm, Netscape ran faster than IE on my P75, and also currently on my PIII450 (or so it seems).
OK, X didn't come with the most flashy fonts, but that doesn't mean you can't install them. You don't *have* to use MS fonts, there are plenty others out there, so Verdana is not a requirement. You could get xfstt and read the installation instructions which'll just require a symlink to your Windows fonts directory if you desire all of them.
If I understand things correctly they will just (re)release WinYY and NT. So we will have Windows 00 and Windows NT 5 but they will both be renamed Windows 2000.
Remove government control from the output of Microsoft and they will die overnight.
You might find Metcalfe's original paper describing Ethernet interesting if you haven't read it. The thing that strikes me after reading it again are its similarities to Linux and its design. It was based on known technology, Aloha radio networks. It was designed to run on inexpensive hardware. And it achieved its reliability from its simplicity. In other words, the same recipe used by nearly every succesfull open source project today, which makes Metcalfe's last column all the more confusing.
Well, didn't Bob get booted from his own company? That probably made him more bitter.
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
In other words, if you look through, the first format to hit critical mass with the product people buy it to use seems to win, unless a very compelling reason comes along to change.
This is the "network effect," and is probably more responsible than anything else both for Windows' de facto OS monopoly on the PC architecture and for why PC architecture greatly outsells other microcomputer designs. (I say "de facto" monopology because there have always been alternatives to DOS and Windows, yet asserting that Compaq had the choice in 1995 to install OS-9000, QNX or Concurrent CP/M-86 is akin to asserting General Motors has the choice to stop making cars and trucks that can run on interstate highways.)
While I don't think we're going to see the end of the network effect for Windows any time soon, I think we are seeing it start for Linux, and possibly for BeOS. None of these are likely to get bigger than MacOS, but that's had enough of a network effect to carry it through years of corporate mismanagement.
Windows' multi-hundred-million user base tends to skew people's ideas of what a sustainable market size is, I think; a market of only one million could sustain small companies, and it only takes a market of a few hundred thousand to sustain "cottage software" houses--something I think we'll start seeing more of in the future again. (What's old is new....)
Ethernet is a pretty hacky design, and won because it was cheeper to build then TR. I'm not exactly in love with it as a way to talk over cables (or fiber), but it actually is a really spiffy way to do wireless (shout until you can't be heard...)
30%? You seem to be way off. 60% in general use seems to be a much better rule of thumb. If you have a switch (and they are so damm cheep these days) you can get far closer to 100%, well over 100% with some valid mesurements. As far as I know Ethernet plus a switch per port is cheeper then Token Ring by a fair margin.
While I think FDDI/CDDI (essensally Token Ring at 100Mbit/sec) is very nice, and doesn't take any effort to get it to run in the high 90% range, it costs more then 100Mbit ethernet plus a switch! It's so hard to argue for it that I have more or less given up on it except when I can make a case for the duel ring CDDI (that way even the network hub can be a redundant item). I'm totally unaware of any Token Ring like offering in the 1Gbit range either, so for the moment it appears to have no future. A pity because I have allways liked it.
Many GNU/Linux/Open Source advocates do take a market tactic. They claim their way gets better product at a lower cost. Ethernet isn't better then TR at any given speed, but it's price/performance is definitly better.
Only that you seem inexperianced with Ethernet. Or maybe that I'm in a contrary mood today.
> So instead of starting religious wars...{I mean Linux and Windows are JUST OSes after all, there are many more serious things to war about)...let's concentrate on interoperability, and getting our favourite OSes up to snuff. It would be a great world if all OSes could share data and services seamlessly with each other, without much tinkering. Instead of trying to drill the pipedream that KDE is as polished as the Windows UI, start helping the KDE project, give them coherent and useful suggestions.
Well, I agree with you that we need people to work on a many of the open source projects and get them as polished and user-friendly as possible. But the other half of your idea, making the OSes inter-operate, is impossible as long as the current Microsoft is in their picture. Microsoft is not interested in the slightest in interoperating with other systems. They want to tie people into MS-only solutions, by making interoperating a headache. This applies at the minimum to any system that competes directly with MS products. They don't mind working with Mainframes or some other huge systems, but desktops, servers and similar systems they want MS-only. They are not interested in publishing their own protocols, and the open standards they use the have a bad habit of implementing in non-standard ways. they even re-implement existing open protocols with MS replacments, just to tie organizations in.(WINS vs DNS for example). My only hope to deal with this is to have the anti-trust case resolution force MS to open its APIs, file formats and other implementations to the whole world.
Didn't Xerox release Ethernet under some Utopian balderdash public-domian license? Dang, that might have cheated Bob Metcalfe out of some Bill Gates-like money. No wonder he's sounding bitter.
Guys, 'old technology' as a descriptive term is fine. Just don't use it to describe obsolete technology and everything will be fine.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
By the time you "download" a full cup I don't think it'll be steamin' hot anymore.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
What do I think is lacking in Win2k? UNIX!
Have a look at Cygwin , it provides a fairly full Unix environment where many programs will compile out of the box.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Please, Please, children, lets think of something constructive to say. Half these FUD statements said on slashdot from time to time, just really gets me pissed off. If you have ever even configured a server (which I doubt), you would know that Linux and other similair OS's are the ultimate in protection these days for servers. If you were a somewhat decent security minded person, you would realize the pain of setting up a compilicated program such as a server and you can't see the code. Most of the time, with 10's of thousands of code, there WILL be a bug in the source, and when you find it or get attacked, I want to see you fix it on a proprietary Windows server. Tell me how long these fixes come out. With the aid of marketing fools, and people in control of the company just thinking of the bottom dollar, instead of the customer, you might not see a decent patch for months. With the servers that are popular on Unix variant OS's being OpenSource, and the most widely used on the planet, you can see why not too many people like to use Windows. I know you have probably heard these arguments before, and have a witty or snide (mostly snide) remark for my comment, it doesn't really matter. I have seen that most people on this earth are stupid, and will never see the truths to be evident based on the personal biases, you all fucking suck!
Bigbiff http://www.exxtreme-linux.org
And he had to eat his columumn in front of 1000 people Pics of this event. For some odd reason, the pics have been restricted :) I wonder why. Lets make a suggestion.. Lets get bob to eat a Linux Manual.
--
Ethernet won because it was cheap and easy to maintain, and in a pinch can be assembled with no special tools. That makes it an excellent analogy. 'Market forces' do not exist in themselves, but always drive towards some objective.
Cool stuff like complete object persistance integrated with capabilities, total virtualization of memory (no "file system" per se) and a sorta microkernel architecture.
Like I said, Eros itself may not be the OS of the future, but a lot of the ideas contained therein will be widely used.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
First of all, Communicator is not crappy. It does what it's supposed to.
Second, plugins are a microscopic part of the web. Also note that the most popular plugin (flash) is available for linux.
Third, if you take the time to check how fonts work in unix/X, you'll realize that you can install whatever fonts you like in whatever format you like. And by the way, it's called "verdana", not "verdona".
Linux is (for the moment) aimed at people with a clue, or people wishing to learn something. So, either read some HOWTOs and set up your fonts, or shut up and use a microsoft OS.
If you don't want to upgrade to RH6.0 which has truetype support out of the box, check the "related projects" page on http://www.freetype.org - there are a couple of pointers to font servers supporting truetype.
This sounds much like asking "Where is my grep?" after installing windows.
Now who's thinking insde the box?
If Windows is made a no-charge product, it will (probably) survive.
Your car analogy is way off base. Neither GM, Ford, nor any other car manufacturer gives their cars away for free. (Don't think about business models here). If someone came along and gave away cars for free, they would take off in a heartbeat. The cars might not be so flashy at first, but these free cars rapidly gett better over time until they meet almost everyone's needs.
Maybe one or two of the car companies would stick around with much smaller markets by catering to the luxury crowd that wants something substantially different. But most of their market share would evaporate quickly.
Barring free Windows, a patent war, or some other act of God, pay-per-license Windows is (eventually) toast. Unfortunately, by that time MS will have used its monopoly profits to buy a prime position in the new computer industry based on services, not hardware/software.
Way to go man, I love reading well-reasoned stuff like this. I run a dual boot, and I can really relate with occasionally just wanting to boot into windows and get it done.
All in all, I can do nothing but agree. Operating system variety is much more desirable than operating system hegemony.
Anyhow, Petreley is right on the mark: "Tried-and-true" ne "antiquated";
--Z.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I was under the impression that all MS software was essentially a beta version. They just happen to have an extremely large test group that is willing to pay money for the privilege of testing it.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
Let's see an Alpha running at the equivalent of a Celeron 300a for under $50.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
You obviously are suffering from the "The only other OS I tried was Windows".
Now you get a clue, this is not about wizards. This is about functional graphical user interfaces, about makeing things easy and efficient, to use the correct UI for given tasks, be it CLI or GUI. A powerful CLI is very well, add to that a powerfull GUI and we're talking, integrate them in a powerfull easy to comprehend and use graphical operating environment and I'm even willing to sign for a license.
Dont expet this to happen with linux, or any other unix, nor windows for that matter, anytime soon.
Oh, and for DLL's.. ldconfig and all those version strings in the filenames, as well as the symlink jungle in carious /lib, /usr/lib, /usr/X11R6/lib etc etc isnt much more elegant than the windows mess IMHO.
And.. hum.. REAL programmers go where the $$$ is.
Is that article really xml? It has a .xml extension, but the contents look like 100% html to me.
The real question is: can paid programmers produce systems that are worth the extra cost for the average user. Today the answer is clearly yes, most users are more willing to pay for Windows or NT than they are to learn Linux.
Wait, I thought Windows came free with my computer!
Besides that, Linus and Alan get paychecks for working on the kernel. I guess that makes them paid too.
("Better" is way too subjective. Be more specific.)
--
QDMerge -- generate documents automatically.
how to invest, a novice's guide
Let me elaborate.
Windows NT came pre-installed on my latest work computer.
I'm not silly enough to believe that it was free. Since the hardware manufacturer didn't offer me a choice of which operating system I want (and since corporate IT uses that one manufacturer exclusively), there goes my choice.
The argument that "most users are willing to pay for Windows or NT" (emphasis mine) is rather silly if the OS is preinstalled and the OS cost is included in the price of the computer. As far as the average consumer cares, he is not really paying for Windows.
If you want to see who is really willing to learn Linux, pre-install it on 85% of the computers sold for the next three years and we'll see what happens then.
Point being: People use Windows primarily because it is, to them, ubiquitous. Reading technical superiority or ease of use or whatever criteria you wish to use into that fact to discredit a Free OS is poor logic.
Remember, WordPerfect 5.1 used to be the standard word processor. That was hardly an example of mouse-enabled, flashy menu-driven GUI programming. It didn't even have a talking paperclip! People used it anyway.
People aren't willing to learn what they don't have to learn, but people are willing to learn what they have to use.
That happens to be Windows, for now.
--
QDMerge -- generate documents automatically.
how to invest, a novice's guide
Looking at it your way, any old ignorance-drenched piece of writ--no matter how earnestly meant--could later be reinterpreted as "irony" to save face and maybe even pile on some brownie points. That pig won't fly here.
If you have read much Metcalfe (as I have over the last 3-4 years, back when he had slightly more intersting things to say than "Impeach Clinton"), you'd know that his irony comes in one form, and one form only: sledgehammer. Bob assumes that everybody else in the known universe is at least slighty more stupid than himself, so he signals irony and sarcasm in a very Monty-Pythonesque fashion.
This is a guy deeply in love with Big Corporate America--anything that benefits Big Money he loves. Linux and the Internet go so completely against that grain that he can't help but loathe them. A little less public visibility might benefit his personality hugely.
Absolutely right! A vital part of the Microsoft strategy is to set the playing field (preferably to one in which they already have made inroads), narrowing the focus of their "attack."
This dovetails nicely with another of their strategies: controlling standards. If all parties implicitly agree that the playing field is what Microsoft says it is (static web pages, or what-have-you), MS can create proprietary protocols and extensions (oooh, especially the extensions!) that outperform (at least initially) the competing ones (usually the de facto standard), or merely provide more Microsoft-only features.
If MS leverages their narrow playing field by marketing the benefits of their extensions to consumers and corporations, they can take the battle away from any product that doesn't use their technologies. And they've got plenty of strategic partnerships (read: drone corporations) to give their extensions universal presence.
Yet another danger of nominating a single metric as the crux of the entire debate.
(Remember IE!)
-W-
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
Once in a while it'd be nice to see a non-AC spreading FUD... *sigh*
1. A bit tax on the Internet. Why should tax money it's competitors pay be used against them.
Sorry, I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
2. Corporations tightening up on wasted time by their programming staffs. Why should companies pay their programmers to diddle around in projects that aren't on the agenda as revenue producing projects.
(a) Many companies are now paying their staff to work on Linux; perhaps this escaped your notice.
(b) I think you'll find that most Linux programmers would happily continue work on private projects on their own time (presuming that they're using company time at the moment, which I think you'll find is not as widespread as you make out.)
3. An end to the classic "Internet." Linux development is heavily subsidized by the mere existence of Usenet, IRC, and various other Internet technologies, which are based on the old notion that the Internet is "free" and available to the government and it's contractors.
I'd like to know what could bring this about. Also, last I heard, most Linux programmers are neither members of the government nor government contractors. Usenet is sustained by the worldwide cooperation of many organizations, including ISPs; those ISPs make their money by attracting customers. If you wanted Usenet, you certainly wouldn't use an ISP that didn't provide it. It's called supply and demand. Look it up.
4. Trojans, hackers, and other goons. Companies that let employees install Linux on machines all over the place in an anarchic fashion are asking for serious trouble. Unsecured Linux boxes are nests for criminals to lodge their code into for further attacks on other parts of the corporate infrastructure. This in particular is going to get Linux banned in companies all over the place. A Linux machine on the company network is in itself somewhat of a trojan horse. People joke about it all the time in the Linux community. IS managers don't laugh at that kind of humor.
Let's try changing this a little, shall we?
"4. Trojans, hackers, and other goons. Companies that let employees install NT on machines all over the place in an anarchic fashion are asking for serious trouble. Unsecured NT boxes are nests for criminals to lodge their code into for further attacks on other parts of the corporate infrastructure. This in particular is going to get NT banned in companies all over the place. A NT machine on the company network is in itself somewhat of a trojan horse. People joke about it all the time in the NT community. IS managers don't laugh at that kind of humor."
Do you see my point? It's not the OS, it's the security policy of your IS department that's responsible for these problems. An IS department (BOFHs not withstanding) are responsible for providing the equipment and software needed to conduct business efficiently while ensuring that any security risks are kept at acceptable levels. Linux is becoming more and more viable in the workplace; IT departments need to be able to cope with it. This means educating users, providing automated scripts for securing Linux boxes, etc. All of these things have to be done for NT, Solaris, BSDI, Tru64, or any other OS that you care to name.
5. Intellectual Property Issues. The GPL has never seen it's day in court. When some legal precedents are set, we will see how strong it is. In particular, many people who have contributed to the Linux effort work for companies at a day job. Many of them are subject to agreements with their employer that prohibits them from contributing code to non-company efforts. As the litigation picks up (it will, when Linux becomes more than a 1-2% phenomenon) the Linux kernel will start looking like swiss cheese, with sections that are pulled because the code belongs to the company a hacker worked for when producing it. Lots of fun will then emerge as people have to fill those holes with new cleanroom code.
I'm not going to comment about the GPL; I'm no lawyer. However, I can comment about your second point. Apparently, you consider kernel hackers to be mentally deficient, because this is a problem that has come up before, and if you bothered to check, you would see that the major kernel hackers have themselves covered, while everybody else is at least aware of the problem and mostly careful to avoid any such conflicts. Even if such an event did come to pass, it wouldn't be difficult to replicate their work (the kernel is highly modularized, and it's not really that complicated when you look at the individual bits.) The only areas that could be considered vulnerable are device drivers, and it wouldn't be too hard to reproduce those, given that to be in the kernel in the first place, either the device specifications have to be available or the device has to have been reverse engineered.
These points need to be considered by any commercial entity seriously considering putting a significant part of it's infrastructure on Linux. They'll be thinking about stuff like this. Don't forget that with Microsoft all they have to do is budget it in.
And some gratuitous FUD to finish up with, eh? Just remember to budget in all the other crap you'll need when you're setting up an NT server. Go and crawl back under your rock, troll.
Every version of NT (including Win2000) has had both NB-over-TCP/IP and NetBEUI as options.
The advantage of ActiveDirectory and Dyanamic DNS is that you *should* be able to get rid of the NetBIOS broadcast traffic from your network. Of course, that's what they said about WINS, so we will see.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Actually, given enough memory (~128 MB), Windows2000 will run fine on Pentium machines. (As a workstation, it feels faster than NT4, anyhow.)
I wouldn't be took shocked if it came out that the 300Mhz figure is some sort of kickback to Intel.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Companies can afford the memory. Linux makes good use of 128MB too. If you'd rather buy something else, don't worry and run Linux or whatever suits you.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Oh man, I was reading that just after I took a sip of soda and I sprayed it all over my monitor. LOL!
I think we're all in agreement here that it would take a climactic event to totally halt the development of Linux. It evolved nicely back in 1994 and 1995, and it certainly wasn't in the limelight then. So who cares if all the cash and investment disappears? Sure, we'll get support for that brand-spanking-new Gigabit Token Ring card a bit after Windows gets it, but the point is that we'll get it.
The thing I find funny is that Microsoft loves to argue about total cost of ownership. Let's see: you would probably need to hire a guy to administrate your Linux box, but then again, you'd probably need to hire another guy (and, if your management is at par, an MCSE) to administrate your NT box. Then there's the cost of the OS itself, plus the additional hardware to get NT off the ground. (At a startup company where one of my friends works, they have a number of high-powered machines sitting around, but the machine holding up the whole enterprise is the Linux server on the Pentium 233 with 48MB of RAM.) Of course, the average IT professional can read better than he can think...
"As long as MS keeps trying to win all the battles they probably won't win any. But if they can succeed in narrowing the debate to "if Windows is better at X then Linux must suck" they WILL do whatever is needed to make Windows better at X." We must continue to define in terms of the movement and the ability of the products and services the movement produces to work of, for and by all computer users of the digital community. It is the community spirit that Microsoft can never develope. Microsoft is for Microsoft, the community is just it's profit base. Microsoft doesn't see the marketplace as part of it's corporate structure. We consumers are on the outside looking in.
an enigma wrapped around a paradox driven by a paradigm shift
Metcalfe sounds like he's trying to say "Don't trust anyone over 30" Hey Bob, aren't you old technology?
an enigma wrapped around a paradox driven by a paradigm shift
Bob Metcalfe is an idiot. Windows uses old technology too (the mouse and icons have been around for a few decades). Every day people use old technology to get to other places (the wheel was invented 10,000 years ago). Even food comes from old technology (BBQ was invented about 100,000 years ago).
He thinks MS Word is new technology.
The final beta of Win2000 was released some time ago, as I remember....
>Quite frankly, I don't want Linux to smash Windows, or the MacOS. I want the various
>parties to concentrate on themselves, and interoperability. Linux isn't for everyone,
>neither is Windows, or the MacOS. Making progress on interoperability should be
>the real goal.
Agreed. How so many people can use the monoculture argument against Windows, then turn around and ignore the same argument as applied to Linux, is amusing. The diversity of a world where one can use BeOS or MacOS or NeXT (!) without penalty should be the real goal.
Plus, I agree that W2K is a good step in the right direction -- I have to support it as part of my job and it looks like we'll be installing it on a number of customers' networks. Well, it ain't any worse than the status quo. It does seem more stable -- the biggest problem I have with NT isn't the stability per se, but the compromises in performance necessary to maintain stability. (I guess that makes me a sorry-ass M$oft shill in some eyes, but I don't take those opinions seriously -- probably teenagers who haven't had to deal with the Real World (tm) yet.)
Meanwhile I push Linux and Perl-based solutions within my company where I can. It all depends on whether you're in it for the long haul or not. I don't know that Linux will win (q.v. Metcalfe) -- but I don't know that Microsoft will win either. Maybe ten years from now we'll all be using SmithOS, which is in kernel version 0.84 in some guy's guest bedroom right now. Open Source represents a lot of good things we want to see happen; we shouldn't be depending on one solution to deliver them all -- isn't that what got us in this situation in the first place?!
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Instead of defining a term to replace old technology, why don't we remove the stigma associated with "old". Old is technically the right word; UNIX did happen in the late 60s.
--Hunter Pankey
I dont know really how do YOU?
I am serious sorry if I sounded sarcastic, if thier is a way I wanna know how..
jk
negahban@home.com
You make deference to unix, but I'm still wondering if you really have tried gnome. I find the vaunted win gui incredibly irritating and frustrating and reboot into linux with a sigh of relief. Gnome looks and feels much slicker than my win97. It has some bugs and holes (ver. 1.0 for kris'sake!), but what it does have is more functional and easier to use than windows. And I suspect win2k is just more of the same hand-holding, know-better-than-the-user, have-to-fix-holes-in-the-OS-with-3rd-party-softwar e.
tcboo
No, I was real disappointed to find out the xfs server that's now a part of XFree86 does _not_ support truetype. A patch is available however (look on freshmeat). I will just continue to use xfstt until the patch is official. I just make a link from /c/windows/fonts (mounted on /c, of course) to /usr/ttfonts.
tcboo
To quote Shaft, "You're Damn Right!"
Great closing line!
>> Linux runs on more hardware
> Wrong.
Hmmm...
x86 x >= 3, ARM, Alpha, SPARC, M68k, PowerPC, MIPS, x86 x 3 (ELKS).
Having myself been occasionally confused as to the meaning of some obscure acronym mentioned here on /., I can vouch for the superlative usefulness of the following site:
http://www.acronymfinder.com/
iSKUNK!
That would be true if capitalism were the opposite of socialism. Socialism is a political system, while capitalism is an economic system, that empasizes the utility of capital. The old Soviet Union and the new China were/are capitalist. Any economic system that depends on the existance of capital (a factory) is capitalist.
The confusion arises because of the Orwellian use of the words "socialism" and "capitalism". It would be just as accurate to use the words "statism" and "industrialism".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
We like to customize it, we like to run apps for days and weeks without them crashing on us..
Specially, since you're a programmer, we like to write efficient code, code that we know well. Tell me if you have a real understanding of the internals of the code Visual* generated.....
Still, I don't think you're ready for Linux if you only gave it 1 week...you obviously were not inteding to LEARN anything, were you?
You choose whether you want to be led by MS or make your own decisions...
How about just calling it techonology? As opposed to Microsoft's supposed technology, which should be referred to as smoke and mirrors.
Joe Mainusch http://www.weber-amps.com
I read someplace that Bob Metcalfe was the brainchild of ethernet (at Xerox perhaps?). Is this true? I haven't seen anyone here post about this fact.
Anyway, if this is so, that ending statement was even more perfect.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
Software evolves. If we were saying that the UNIXes of 30 years ago were superior to modern day OSs, then somebody should go see a shrink, but UNIX has evolved like every other piece of software. Kernel version 2.2.10 is not 30 year technology, it is a little under two week old technology (having been released on June 14th).
- This post was made by a peice of technology that according to Bob Metcalfe is 4 Billion years old. Seems to me, we're doing just fine.
http://www.ferrycam.com/livepush.html worked fine when I loaded it up with Communicator 4.6. As far as the tiny, ugly fonts go, yes that is a problem, but a fixable problem. Check out the Font Deuglification Mini HOW-TO at http://www.frii.com/~meldroc/F ont-Deuglification.html - it'll show you how to set up TrueType support and increase the size of those tiny fonts.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
Would Bob complain about old technology when
he's the inventor of a very successful OT himself?
Bob's article is the best piece of irony I've
seen for a very long time. Anyone who complains
loudly makes a fool out of himself, IMNSHO.
Mark Hall (in his article in Performance Computing) how Bob Herbold, Microsoft's COO and EVP, spoke in his "Keynotemercial" at PCExpo this week about the way prices have been dropping over the years. To quote Hall:
For example, he noted that in
1990 an "average" PC cost $3,000, and
today only $600. He also revealed that
the elements of MS Office cost $1,500 in
1990, while Office 2000 "only" costs
$499. So the MS software suite cost up
to 50 percent of what a PC cost in 1990,
but today it is 83 percent. I suggest Bob
change his infomercial speech, unless
he thinks his audience can't do the math.
Change "audience" to anything you feel appropriate. computer manufacturers? why not users??? who have to pay a bundle for the MS Office they inevitably need to buy considering the market dominance of the aforementioned bloat.
amit
I think most sane people will realize he's just full of BS when he starts comparing Linus to mass murderers like Lenin.
Well, so you have a Bsc. in Comp. Sci., or perhaps you've been hacking computers for 10 years. Both true for me.
/.ed already. In addition to the previous replies I should express that there aren't heaps of other features. There can't be, there can only be quick bugfixes, worhtless little applications, other things to make windows even more clowny. And speaking as a faithful NT4 programmer (because I had to, job you know) I'm not sure if anything weindows can be fast, reliable, stable, secure, whatever. No OS course I took advocates a Windows like OS.
Unfortunately, I can't understand when a so-called programmer praises non-standard, ugly M$ technologies(?). Does somebody really mean that making ActiveX a central part of OS is any good? That one must have blown the sh*t out of his nose.
Sorry, the W2k features listed have been
I apologize, but real programmers are a bit more rigorous than that.
--exa--
I really wonder who Metcalf is and what qualifies him as a technical reviewer of software. He doesn't seem to be any more qualified than an average medical doctor. I mean, he can write, but he seems to have no clue about operating systems... I also think that W2K will mark the collapse of M$ as a leader in OS products. At least I hope so. Though it wouldn't be the case if the majority of users are as idiot as Metcalfe. We'd (with cmos) speculated that the release of NT5 was delayed because it was very difficult to recompile the source-tree. Be warned that the renamed NT5 is still a bug factory, and a masterpiece of kitsch.
--exa--
I consider Windows 2000 to be an absolutely amazing products cause of it's choke full of features, as well as remaning stable and fast.
Remaning stable and fast? Window hasn't been fast since 3.11 and has never been stable. I have never even heard of a Windows98 machine being up for more than a month.
If it's only remaining stable, this could be problematic -- my work machine (P2-450, 128M RAM, NT4.0sp3) rarely lasts 5 days without (a) blue-screening; (b) eating itself up memory-wise (that is to say, losing a block of 100+ meg for no apparent reason); (c) explorer crashing and doubling-up some of the apps; (d) getting very user-app crash-prone and slow as molasses.
[sigh] It's not like I don't want to like NT, but it's so goddamned opaque. I have to live in this environment at work, and I've done what I can, but it still feels like I'm pulling my teeth out sometimes.
Auto personalising menus.
I don't know what this is
It's where the menus re-arrange themselves based on what you've clicked on. Which means you can't actually learn the menus (since they periodically change), but have to keep hunting. When I first heard of this feature (slated for, um, Chicago, was it?), the first thought I had was: How in the world are they going to support products which keep changing their interface?
I hope it can be turned off. That is one "feature" that would drive me batty!
This
The Metcalfe column completely reeked of flamebait. Any half-wit could spot it. The article could just as easily have been a troll-post on comp.os.linux.advocacy, it was so transparent. In fact, I've seen better trolls on c.o.l.a. And Petreley's response, no doubt planned. Generate lots aggravation, lots of publicity, lots of hits, soon everyones talking about the site, terribly controversial, shove loads of ad banners down your throats, etc etc. How many ads do you count on that web page? Those hit statistics go right back to the advertisers, thus raising their premiums.
Don't bother wasting your time on this nonsense. These "journalists" aren't interested at all in maintaining any sort of integrity, so I doubt it's worth even crying "FUD". What are you expecting, a retraction? Yeah right. Metcalfe has gone out of his way to pack the article with invalid logical inferences and statements designed to provoke. Those cheap literary manipulation devices are placed there on purpose. Sure, Petreley may be a linux advocate
Don't fall for this media manipulation, people. It's too transparent and this community is way too smart. This sort of cheap manipulation should only be working for people with IQ's on the other side of the bell curve.
>you can't even kill the process with task manager
on NT
yes, this is the whole reason i refuse to use ie 5 on my nt box at work...as sucky as netscape is, i cant stand that feature (bug?)
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
I think its important to remember our ... I know when we put out
... is just that -- putting out nice ...
roots here
our E-CAD package under the GPL in 1990
www.cs.berkeley.edu/~lazzaro/chipmunk
we weren't doing it for "world domination",
we were doing it so there would be nice
(for the time) tools for people to use
to design chips. And from what I can tell,
a lot of the spirit of gcc, emacs, Linux,
ect
tools by and for a community. If we keep
the focus on quality and community, and
not the folks at Redmond, only good things
can happen
Why are all the Pro-M$ comments AC?
/.
Is this the Anti-Linux group we've heard of, or are you just afraid of being flamed? I see NO reason why to give credence to an uncheckable, unarguable opinion.
I wonder if M$ could afford to pay 5 typists to post comments on
Business is War and the OS of a machine everyone in the world will have is BIG business.
Therefore, no credit for ACs, ever.
+&x
You are wrong. There was a (now extinct) German Linux Distribution, Unifix, who got a POSIX compliance for their distribution. The problem: You have to reapply every time you change a single byte, which makes it a little expensive, especially with Linux changing every day.
There is a difference between using and damaging a computer. NT and Windows 98 have a habit of allowing any user or program damage or change the critical DLLs, registries, INIs, etc to the system which will cause the system not to operate (or at worse a program that relied on the DLL). Unix has built in procedures to prevent this from happening. You can delete the files if you are root, but all the other users cannot. They system actually takes steps to prevent changes to glibc and the other system libraries to allow the system to function. I just hate telling people that the reason there NT and all there programs work is because they've installed some software (usually a new Microsoft program) that has either changed all the needed DLLs or damaged the registry. It happens more often than not. And it is really sad that it happens at all.
AFAIK, Metcalfe is indead doesn't know what
... well, I've ... We make INTERNET work,
he's talking about. He *is* completely out of
touch.
His prediction made a few years ago that
'INTERNET would come to a grinding halt' was
a complete B.S.'. He had to take his words back.
Publicly.
As far a 'cocky little punks'
been in computing/networking business for about
15 years, currently work for one of the top-tier
INTERNET providers
buddy. What are *your* credentials, by the way?
Grunt. Oink, oink.
AFAIK = As Far As I Know
IIRC = If I Remember Correctly
I can't remember where I learnt these, I think I probably just guessed from context. I suppose they might be found in the Jargon File, though that's not really meant for that sort of thing.
Andrew.
So instead of starting religious wars...{I mean Linux and Windows are JUST OSes after all, there are many more serious things to war about)...
this is like saying that Cthulhu is just alittle hungery, ( or that shoggoths aren't the perfect lover)and Discorda is just another goddess...
anyway, domesticated primates have made war on anything, dont let it bother you. if you dont war about OSes what do you make (love) war on? well, my advice, is to just:
Practive Random Acts of Intelligence and Senseless Acts of Self-Control!!!
ps: now dont go looking at shoggoth smut, try primate smut...
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
I know what you mean
then the moon is made of green cheese.
gosh... communism is about centralized control.
free software is about liberty, not control.
It ain't the kernel bud it's the processor.
Some time ago 384 serial processors were setup on a mobo. They needed 80 proceesors to control 304 processors. Take that further. Probably 16 processors controlled 64 that controlled 304.
One mobo can handle 16 proccessors under say Linux. The message passing gets self-multiplying and uses resources on its own. It cause the 16:1 processor to go down to barely 5:1.
Plus message passing introduces a stability killer.
While using 95/98/3.x I used to see
-----------------------------------------
| |
| Msgserver(32).exe caused a Global |
| Protection Fault at blah:blah |
| |
-----------------------------------------
MK's will rule when processors do some of the describing of the universe themselves.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
I'll thank you not to confuse me like that.
Ignoring character is a social disease. Every civilization dies by that. And yes geek profilers, anti-gun groups, gaming=murder Nazis, all ignore character.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Sheesh
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Wait until the hardware vendors figure out that they don't have to choose -- that whenever they ship NT, they can *also* ship Linux.
Windows will die.
Like a bug.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
As long as you call them idiots, they'll stick with Billg, who loves them.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Mes amis, y'all have forgotten a critical point: the best technology doesn't necessarily win. Beta didn't win, the Mac didn't win (back when it was better), Netscape didn't win (I liked Netscape a lot more than Explorer), Java has been mostly replaced online by ActiveX, etc.
Yeah, you've got a point, but I don't think we should focus on Linux toppling Microsoft here. We should instead focus on open source toppling Microsoft. The real reason Linux already has as much grassroots support as it does right now isn't wholly technological superiority -- it's about that to which Linux owes its technological superiority, the open source development model. Sure, Microsoft can spout bullshit -- or even true -- benchmarks placing Windows ahead of Linux -- but they CAN'T go out and prove somehow that their development teams work faster and better than the thousands of people who contribute to open source software worldwide -- regardless of whether or not it's true, it's just impossible to prove scientifically.
Microsoft has deep pockets, Bill Gates rules the world, and most people are too stupid to figure out that MS software is bloated drek. Good example: Office 95 is faster than Office 98, and has the same features (mostly). But people upgraded...why? It seems to return to that "people are stupid" thing again. If you think that the public will ever abandon the simplicity and crappiness of Windows for the unknown Linux, you're nuts.
I don't think people upgraded Office because they're stupid, honestly -- it's just that they aren't computer experts and Microsoft can lie about all sorts of great improvements that go into their software. If they don't want to spend time looking for themselves, and a big company with lots of money -tells- them it's better, it might seem logical to believe it. This is ignorance, not stupidity. Stupidity is frying your hand taking the Pop Tarts out of the toaster because you decided you didn't want them after all. If people KNOW there's an alternative to the "simplicity and crappiness" of Windows, then we don't have the problem of Linux being "unknown." All that remains is to shout loud enough for people to hear.
A popular name for the Microsoft system is "the cathedral." Look deeper into the metaphor: we're atheists, hoping that the faithful will abandon the corrupt church. Maybe we can introduce doubt into the minds of the educated and intelligent, but the idiot masses will stick with the established thing.
I don't think it's such a great idea to extend that analogy beyond its intentions and risk alienating Christians...
This, btw, is the same approach Apple is taking with Mac OS X Server. It is not certified, and they don't really plan on doing it, but Apple said that if developers find any holes in the POSIX support, then they should report them as bugs.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
"Old" technology is having a base memory of 640k and then hiding it from the user. "Old" technology is not having true protected memory. Unix has had protected memory for quite a while. On the other hand look at what happens when one program crashes in Windows.
err..,microkernels are SLOWER. thats a fact which is easily observed. increasing the data transfer between parts of any kernel will slow it down...and thats what a microkernel does. its like a 10 line assembly program is always faster than a 10 line BASIC/PASCAL/ program..the high level program may be more elegant but its not a quick and dirty assembly hack.
install the true type X server..its available somewhere. then simply copy the truetype fonts into ../X11/fonts and put them as default fonts to be loaded. relatively trivial..i got it working in 20 mins.
heck...when i was 16 i was using DRDOS. after a few years you'll grow out of the M$ crap and start learning something. Eventually you'll understand why we all like unix (linux, BSD, irix whatever..).
actually BSD is not better than linux in a lot of areas...it may/may not be faster or more streamlined..but its still unix at its core. unix flavours may have some advantages over others, but not one of them is singificantly "better" than the other. i work on Irix, Solaris, Linux, BSD, AIX and DEC OSF/1 on a daily basis (mainly cause im a sysadmin) and all of them have their strengths and weaknesses.
his column doesnt read like it was written by a bigot...record or not.
There are valid points on both arguments but Nick Petrely really takes it home. Bob unlike many PIII (Big brother inside), Windose users... many value our privacy...Not only by being part of an utopian movement of the skies... but seeing what exactly our machines are running, and how secure and reliable they are. So Linux might not slay of Win of they're current position anytime soon... but certainly it will not dissapear. People need security and stability on a realible base... just wait for the Win2000 exploits, then eat your column. While Nick Petrely keep up the good work!
Yeah, that closing line was classic.
I certainly agree that, generally, the majority of software improves over time, as it continues to be tweaked and reworked and tested. The same would/should also apply to hardware, as new innovations are made. even his precious windows would seem to be better now than when it first came out (though that's not saying much for it, eh?) so bob, how about some linux?
Insert mind here.
It crashes frequently and randomly hangs my machine and you can't even kill the process with task manager on NT (which i'd never seen before this). Outlook Express, which comes with it, frequently sends a thread into an infinite loop of some kind that pegs the processor and brings the whole machine grinding to an almost-halt. Luckily you can kill it, unlike the situation i'm seeing with IE5. Anyway, I wouldn't call it "rock solid". It could be worse though.
I even have two 386SX (16 and 20MHz, 6 and 4MB RAM) :-) Great for email and surfing with
and I use them as text-terminals in other rooms of
my house. Little neat notebooks, very quiet and doesn't take
up any space
Lynx.
Since Microsoft had to earn their money from just software and needed to lure people into buying updates/newer versions of their OS. Their ideal situation is to create something from the clothes industry with spring and fall fashion. They are heavily promoting this fashion thinking as their livelihood depends on it.
The concept of having a year number into a product name helps them in hammering in this sort of fashion thinking into peoples minds. 'Upgrading' file formats with newer releases is also a proven recepie to force people into upgrading their outdated software.
This idea of new/old technology/year model, is just Microsofts PR machinery doing an excellent job.
Linux/UNIX doesn't have this fashion thinking. It's just about version numbers with backwards compatibility and contionously refining the OS.
'Technology with a tradition of excellence' is my suggestion.
//Pingo
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
Dear Anonymous Coward,
That's me. So what? Want to comment on the subject of the thread?
LJS
Go ahead and start your stupid witch hunt. I've said many times here that I used to work for Ziff-Davis. You're real brave making yourself the thought police without even putting up anything close to your own name.
LJS
Technology, as far as I'm concerned, is not "old" until its performance pales enough in comparison to even the lowest-end product produced at the current moment as to be worth scrapping. For 30-year-old technology, UNIX certainly has held up quite well, as it is being used for the majority of Web servers on the planet, and is more reliable than the latest NT cruft-up.
And UNIX isn't even really 30-year-old technology anyway. Comparing the latest Linux kernel, with multiprocessing support, several different supported filesystems, etc. to the early AT&T UNIX is, of course, ridiculous.
what does FUD stand for?
[cut]
:-)
>I decided to install Windows 2k Pro on one of my
>(linux) laptop partitions.
[cut]
>Windows 2k is undoubtedly bloated outrageously,
>but on my 192mb PII 366 system its not reall
>noticed.
I must say, it is _very_ nice laptop!
Regards,
kovi
I used to think that about OS/2. I'm now running NT on the systems that I ran OS/2 on, and to do the same kinds of tasks. There's too much hardware and too many classes of applications - yes, those things that open source coders don't create because it's not interesting to them - whose manufacturers only want to support on Windows because the overwhelming majority of their customers use it. I dearly hope that M$' Windows monopoly is broken, but I just don't see it happening.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Windows in general will not start collapsing until the release of Windows AFTER win2000. After 35,000,000 lines of code, how much more can you add before it becomes obvious to the GENERAL PUBLIC NOT JUST COMPUTER TECHIES that windows is a bloated, slow, antiquated, unwieldy beast? M$ and Metacalf can kiss my ass because I will be celebrating the beginning of M$'s slow demise when they release win2000 by formatting my win98 partition and installing BeOS r4.5 or r5 on it and using my existing bfs partition for mp3z. He is right though that linux isn't exactly too modern in some areas, but if it works, it works. I wonder why it is that M$/Mindcraft never bother to benchmark Free/Net/OpenBSD against NT.........
---Got Coffee?---
Linux evolves just like science evolves -- just like, ahem, computer science. Despite all the micro vs macro kernel arguments I don't think that microkernels ever "won". They never "won" the way quicksort won vs. bubblesort.
Computer scientists have demonstrated, not just on paper but in practice, that microkernel operating systems are faster, more reliable, and much more modifiable (or evolvable if you please) than monolithic kernels. I'd say that microkernels have won just as much as quicksort won.
However, you'll notice that the fastest quicksorts usually switch to the O(N^2) insertion sort about about N=15. It's simpler and turns out to run faster in practice. Hybrid solutions work for kernels as well, so I wouldn't completely discount microkernels. They're extermely effective _and_ elegant.
As for Unix, let's set the history straight. Unix was not designed with an incredible amount of foresight or elegance in mind. It was a hacked up version of Multics (a well designed system) designed to get running on PDP-11's asap (actual computer might be wrong).
Unix and X-Windows were both in essence weekend projects that have been patched to hell and live on up to this day. I find Linux in the same league as these two beasts. So, I don't judge any of them by their legacy or pervasive and well thought out designs, but instead solely on performance and extensibility. There is definitely room for fresh ideas in here.
hmm linux = communism? mature.. but the point is, in the real world, u cannot take resources like a barrel of grain say and make a carbon copy of it for free. you can make as many copies of linux as you want without having to give any up. THAT is why free source can work, and why it does work and will continue to work.
Linux is 40 year old technology? What part of linux is 40 years old? The only ancient thing about it is the key ideas behind it, the multiuser structure and the way the filesystem works etc. NEWS: Windows ripped that off a while back, and did a crappy job at that. NT permissions are a joke. And Linux, i might remind you, moves much faster than windows ever did. I've seen windows 2000 -- the only noticeable difference is that the menus can now fade in instead of just scrolling out like in 98 (and of course the screen tends to go blue a lot more, but i'll let it slide since it's beta, and lord knows how good ms is at fixing the bugs before release). The recent benchmarks pointed out a few bottlenecks in linux, and they are already being worked on and slated for release in 2.4 i believe. Linux developers are much better at fixing bugs etc. So, in summary, claiming that linux is "40 year old technology" is pretty redundant since it's coming along faster than ever right now.
Hey... Am I the only one who thought the page was great? I mean, that's the best laugh I've had ALL DAY!! (Well, OK, it's only morning here, but still...). Any how, just take it for what it is - an (intended) spoof!
If MS falls under "centralized control", would it not then represent socialism? And if Linux falls under "evolution and natural selection of a decentralized marketplace" would it not represent capitalism?
You love feeding on Linux weenie fud eh?
The official recommendations for Windows 2000 is a Pentium 166. I'm running on a K6-200, and it's going great.
Did you hear about this 300mhz requirement from the same guy who thinks Windows 2000 doesn't come with the ability to administer users or add new hardware cause he couldn't find the computer manager?
I consider Windows 2000 to be an absolutely amazing products cause of it's choke full of features, as well as remaning stable and fast. Speed is something Linux still needs to improve on (I'm talking about scalability here, not on a 386 w/2mb ram). Stability, maybe Linux is stable for the moment, X leaves much to be desired tho. Maybe we'll see that in ver4.
;). :)).
...based on 'nothing'. And those who claim to have tested it say things like, it's crap! There's no way to add my com ports, and no way to add users. LOL.
;).
And features. Man, boy oh boy does Windows 2000 have features.
-ACPI Power management
-Hibernation mode (dump mem to harddisk)
-On Now (with hibernation mode) (20second boot)
-IE5.1 integration. Stable, fast, and NEVER crashes (for me anyway) - some people - interestingly enough, linux users, seem to somehow make it crash.
-IE5 (explorer) lets you view ftp and web sites just like any other folder on your local system of NFS/SMB share.
-You can start every explorer (file and web) in a new process now if you wish. Shouldn't have a reason to taken down your task bar with explorer if you decide to terminate it. I've never had that problem with Windows 2000 though.
-Windows Common control open/save dialog enhanced and supports loading & saving from/to URLs (like above). Since almost all apps use Common Controls, including Java ones, it'll work with almost all your apps.
-Offline internet and lan folders. (Network shares remain valid even when you're disconnected).
-USB, IEE1394, DVD, Video Capture.
-Auto personalising menus.
-New Management console - control your computer and/or entire network from one console that's 'Pluggable' with COM objects.
-Telnet server (for legacy guys).
-Terminal server (for legacy guys).
-COM+ and Transaction server integration.
-Computer manager allows you to tweak every little bit of Windows.
-IIS5, ASP support with VB, Java, Perl scripting
-Windows Scripting Host for automating windows with scripting languages.
-Extremely refined UI. Right click on anything and you'll get a context menu. Drag and drop anything on everything. (Gnome and KDE still need a lot of work on this).
-Semi-Transparent windows support inbuilt into Win32.
-SMP suppoirt for up to 32 processors (and they are actually efficiently utilized, unlike linux).
-New Windows 2000 install API - Auto repairing.
...basically you can't destroy your system by deleting or overwriting vital DLLs/vxds etc, they are automatically recovered on deletion.
-New NTFS5 file system supports cluster compression and encryption (and ofcourse security etc).
-New Kerberos security model (developed early last decade at MIT).
-DirectX 7 and OpenGL.
-Win32 SoundAPI goes thru DirectX, legacy applications and new applications will all work be able to use the sound card at once - without being aware of DirectX or modification.
-New generation Plug'n'Play support. Literally, just plug and play. Drivers install automatically - no reboots
-New indexing with a cut down version of sql sever for fast file searches (which is done from the same IE band as web searches now).
-Shadowed mouse (ok, ok, but it just looks cool
And basically, every part of windows is pluginable more than ever because of the nature of Explorer now. Desktop is an ActiveX container, explorer file listings is an ActiveX container etc etc. Ofcourse you have to be a programmer and know what you're doing.
Basically Windows 2000 is your all round OS.
And fit ready for consumer as well as commercial use.
Beta3 IS the final beta - I don't know what all that crap other people were going on about haven't there already been heaps of 'final betas'. MS have always had a 3 beta cycle. And there has only been one beta3 - it took a while, but it's here non the less.
I find it um, amusing that people here are already claiming Windows is crap, or has 'nothing'
I've prolly missed out heaps of other features but all of this is from the top of my head, and in the order they came out
Windows 2000 has many little bits and pieces which makes it much more productive for the average person than Linux. And even for the advid programmer like me. I like the little bits which make my life easier. Ofcourse I still like command lines, but not for everything. Little time savers in Windows are much appreciated, and I can see where Microsoft put it's millions into GUI research. And I'll look forward to when MS Research's natural language engine gets integrated into Windows. (BTW text to speech is part of Windows 2000, and it reads dialog boxes etc).
Ofcourse, when natural language gets integrated into Windows, people will say "bah", I'd rather type a couple of lines than just "say" "computer, search on the internet for traces of that operating system called linux".
(ok, ok, Linux won't die, but neither will Windows - and Microsoft would never release MS Linux - they've invested heavily into NT and their other Research projects).
Besides Linux doesn't scale too well (yet) does it?
Gees, with all of those great things it's no wonder that W2K is a bloated piece of shit that MS can't seem to get out the door and that so many people are switching to Linux.
bloated? Look at X, E, KDE (and it isn't even completed) and Java. So many people switching to Linux? Who? Did I miss something? I'm using Linux, but I'm not switching to it, and even if dual use counted, it's not exactly a lot of people.
Wow, a web browser, hibernation mode, telnet, offline internet folders (sounds almost as good as keeping all home folders on a server with Linux so that you can access all your files and configurations from any computer), support for Java and Perl, a terminal server, a self repairing function to make up for NT's poor original design (I don't get these problems with Unix), and even shadow mousing!
Care to explain NT's poor orignal design? You don't get these problems with Unix? What problems are you refering to? Care to explain everything you're saying? Perhaps you don't get problems cause you're used to unix and know how not to do things. Throw joe blogs at unix, and i garuntee you, he could mess up heaps of things. Hell, we're starting to see library conflicts with Gnome apps already.
Wow, that's great. But I think a.) you've been reading to many MS advertising pamphlets b.) MS has been keeping you in the dark ages for far too long and c.) no one really cares because no one is going to go out and switch to NT anyways.
What???? No, you're working for Microsoft. No, how much is microsoft paying you? No, Joe Barr tricks like you're an evil Gates sucking hoar?
MS hasn't kept me in the dark ages, if it wasn't for MS, I probably wouldn't be into computers. And I do use Linux - infact I develop applications at work for the Linux platform. But I much prefer Windows 2000. It performs better too. And NT's IP stack and SMP support doesn't do so bad for a 'poor orignal design'. I guess all the research by those Phds as MS research really don't add up to much eh?
Yes, you can turn off KDE etc...be in the dark. You'll still be using the command line when we're in space talking to our computers.
What's this bullshit about NT's design allowsing you to overwrite DLLs and VXDs, I can do the same in Linux. I can overwrite and delete everything. It's called being able to use the computer.
And I didn't 'copy' a feature list. Those are the things I've been using.
coming from the same people who think E is cool cause it looks cool.
You can turn the fading off if you want to, and it doesn't slow me down AT ALL.
I keep it turned on.
I use both linux and windows at work and at home.
I can tell you now, for me, the gnome interface rates about 1:10 (gnome:windows).
It's half witted attempt to be windows and something else.
Why can't i right click on an icon and say have a look at it's attributes. There are so many 'little' things which haven't been implemented, which are the things which make it much, much more functional like explorer.
It's lack of context menus etc is really bad.
Heck, double clicking on the clock doesn't do anything - it SHOULD - not cause windows does, but because it's the sensible thing to do.
I'm defintely more productive in Win2000.
Thank's for saving my time ;)
:)
Actually, I will add to it tho
He doesn't seem to be aware than Windows NT/2000 does have security over files!!! And obviously the registry.
What I was talking about was even if the Administrator deletes files, or even if the user deletes files (which he owns), Windows will automatically (or optionally assist you) in restoring those files.
In a network situation, windows will use intellimirror to restore network applications you break by deleting files.
In conclusion, it's less the OS, but more the root/adminstrator that is the problem if you have a problem with DLLs etc being deleted. YOU CAN SECURE FILES. Windows 2000 takes much more measures than Unix does in protecting files. It even protects against mistakes made by Administrators.
Failing all that, Windows 2000 has a safe mode (command line and GUI) to restore the system.
What you've just said is so idiotic and ignorant, I just have to do another reply.
What procedures does Unix have (that NT doesn't) that prevents libraries etc from being overwritten?????
Secures system files and folders from non administrators? Gee, that's hard, and that's hardly an OS thing, it's an administrator's job to secure the system and registry.
And "It happens more often that not" - LOL you mean over 50% of the time applications on NT fail for your friends? Unlucky guys. I get 99.9% success...but then I know what I'm doing.
My original point was that Windows 2000 protects user level and root level system files from both users and root users. Obviously, if a user goes and deletes or overwrites system files that are secured, they can't. But say they install an application in their own user space that uses the new Windows Install API, then they delete the exe or something, windows 2000 will be able to automatically fix it for you.
what you say unix does in 'protecting' system files isn't something unix does, it's just an administrator/root securing the files themself. It's not a special Unix feature that actively protects system files - and restores them.
You so seriously don't get it.
MS embrace and extend web protocols, other OSes suffer as a result, and you believe that this sort of asshole-act should be encouraged.
Would you like it if I converted all the roads in the world to dirt tracks and started selling tractors?
You are a very ignorant human being.
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
RH ship xfstt (or is is xfsft...??) w/ rh6. It's started in an initscript.
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ttf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ttf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ttf /usr/sbin/ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale /usr/sbin/mkfontdir
To install tt fonts in rh6.0, follow my simple instructions :
As root :
- Get a dir worth of ttf fonts. cd into it.
- mkdir
- cp *
- cd
-
-
restart x
enjoy
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"