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CNet Article On 2.4 Kernel
jho writes "This C|Net article talks about how the Linux 2.4 kernel, armed with Firewire, PnP and USB support, will be better equiped to tackle the desktop market. It's a intresting read as far as how Linux is being pushed to the mainstream. Have a look. "
At the time I post this, they're about 34 replys. I want to first start by saying clearly "I LOVE LINUX"
Now for the flaming part:
Why is it that the Linux community, for the most part can't accept a little press awareness or a little humor? I am a member of MDLUG (Metro Detroit Linux Users Group) and recently someone posted a funny site that was sarcatic to "Micorsoft" (as he put it), and the group went mad about it. Slam after slam was posted about how STUPID this guy was and I thought his site was hilarious (sorry I don't have the URL handy). I laughed my ass off.
Now CNET is paying attention to Kernel 2.4... so what, big deal. The direction that Linux goes is controlled by what the Linux community wants and what the developers are interested in. God bless the people with that kind of knowledge.
The point of the whole CNET article was that things like USB and Firewire were being worked on, who knows if it will actually be implemented or how stable it will be. As of right now Linux is still geared at people who are computer literate, but I think thats soon to change, especially if things like USB are implemented.
Enough said... now will the uptight people in the Linux community please take a minute to pull the underware out of the crack of their ass' and just be glad that Linux is getting press time? Linux is serious but even Linus said it should be a little fun, and comments like most of these are worthless attempts to slam people that don't know as much as you do.
IMHO, it's just as bad as M$ taking advantage of people's ignorance by hiding the fact that Win98 is version 4.1 and Win95 is version 4.0, how many people realized that? Not many I'll bet, atleast until they spent $89 on it.
Well, you can tell linux is going mainstream when the press starts commenting on the latest linux vaporware. 2.4 isn't out yet. It doesn't have all the features listed in the article in the kernel source. Reminds me of how the press treats a certain Redmond-based company - "w2k will have xyzzy feature - blowing away the competition!".
Okay, mark me down now - I've spoken blasphemy against the holy os...
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I notice that among some other things, the new kernel will have at least some support for Winmodems. We all know that they're crap, but it's good news anyway, because lots of newbies don't know that. There's a lot of scorn among Linux users for anyone whose skills are anything below Guru. This is going to have to stop. A lot of people use Winmodems, and anything we do to make it easier for people with low-end hardware that the guy at Circuit City told them would be fine is great -- GNOME, Winmodem support, wheel mouse support, popular programs e.g. WordPerfect & Netscape. So this is a Good Thing (TM).
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Well, if you want Linux to become a desktop OS, as many people do, you must support Winmodems. An increasing number of PCs come with them. Nearly all sub-$800 PCs come with them. If you have no winmodem support, that's a huge chunk of the market that is not going to use Linux, no matter how good the rest of your OS is.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, NT's file/print sharing code came right from OS/2 (according to older NT documentation). The "Server" service even used to be called "LanMan Server" in NT 3.x. NTFS is also based on HPFS.
However, the NT Kernel and HAL stuff looks nothing like anything that's in OS/2. The folks who designed this worked at DEC on VMS, so the design is influnced by VMS, but that's not the same thing as "based on".
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
That's the wonderful thing about linux: instead of 'features' like an animated paperclip 'assistant', the people developing linux are answering only to thir own needs and things that there is a demand for. There are no marketdroids, no billionaire empire moguls commanding from on high (yet), and no single point of development. These are all Good Things.
With this kind of a development system, I'm not at all surprised that there's no PnP (yet). I hate Plug-n-Pray. Firewire and USB? Bring 'em on, these I can use! However, I'm not yet confident enough to hack my own mods to a kernel, so all I can do is let it be known that I would like these features included in linux, please. Then an amazing thing happens: Enough people want something, and a very generous person dedicates a chunk of his or her life to staring at a glowing screen, and a few kernels later, things work.
Know what, folks? This is a great time to be alive.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Man walked on the moon in 1969, the year before the dawn of the Unix epoch. Must we discard the aging space travel technologies pioneered during and prior to those days and start anew?
The first block-structured language, ALGOL, is now about 40 years old. That software technology is still alive in the latest languages -- Java can trace its roots directly back to ALGOL.
Firearms are now about 500 years old -- and still rule the world in a very literal sense. Further, all the modern pistols I've seen are mere refinements and variations on a 90+ year old design.
It is not the arbitrary incident of when a technology is originally developed that determines its importance now and in the future. The solid stuff lasts and is refined and improved. Like it or not, the works of Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were so fundamentally sound that new variations of Unix are just hitting their stride now, three decades later.
That kind of quality is something that fans of Bill Gates' young empire, now pushing its third OS family, can only dream about.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Other old computing technologies -
- Windowing GUIs
- Mouse
- Ethernet(!)
- Object oriented programming
- C programming language
And speaking of old computing technology, have you checked to see what's running under Win98 lately?General technologies older than 30 years -
- Telephone
- Internal combustion engine
- Jet aircraft
- Light bulb
- Electricity
- Radio and television
- Indoor plumbing
Can I assume you don't lower yourself to using these old, outmoded technologies either?