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The Re-Unification of Linux
In the wake of the wildly successful Red Hat IPO stories mooting the possibility that Linux might `fragment' under corporate pressure seem to be proliferating. The memory of the great proprietary-Unix debacle of the 1980s and early 1990s is constantly invoked -- N different versions diverging as vendors sought to differentiate their products, but succeeded only in balkanizing their market and inviting the Windows invasion.
But amidst all this viewing-with-alarm (some of it genuine, much of it doubtless seeded by Microsoft) something ironically fascinating is happening. Unix is beginning to re-unify itself.
SGI's recent decision to drop IRIX and focus on Linux is one telling straw in the wind. Another is SCO's launch of a Linux professional-services group, clearly a trial balloon aimed at discovering whether SCO's branded-Unix business can be migrated to a Linux codebase. I visited a Hewlett-Packard R&D lab last week, and learned that many people there expect HP to deep-six its HP-UX product in favor of Linux in the fairly near future.
What's causing this phenomenon? Open source, of course. Whoever you are -- SGI, SCO, HP, or even Microsoft -- most of the smart people on the planet work somewhere else. The leverage you get from being able to use all those brains and eyeballs in addition to your own is colossal. It's a competitive advantage traditional operating-systems vendors are finding they can no longer ignore.
Playing along now and trying to defect later won't work either -- because running away from the community with your own little closed Linux fragment would just mean you didn't get to use those brains any more. You'd be swiftly out-evolved and out-competed by the vendors still able to tap the literally hundreds of thousands of open-source developers out there.
What we have now have going is a virtuous circle -- as each of the old-line Unix outfits joins the Linux crowd, the gravity it exerts on the others grows stronger. The Monterey and Tru-64 development efforts, the last-gasp attempts to produce competitive closed Unixes, can't even muster convincing majorities of support inside the vendors backing them; both IBM and Compaq are investing heavily in Linux.
Linux fragmenting? No way. Instead, it's cheerfully absorbing its competition. And the fact that it is `absorbing' rather than `destroying' is key; vendors are belatedly figuring out that the value proposition in the OS business doesn't really depend on code secrecy at all, but instead hinges on smarts and service and features and responsiveness.
These are all things the worldwide community of open-source hackers are really good at supplying. Vendors become packaging and value-add operations that never have to re-invent the wheel again. Customers get better software.
By joining the Linux community, everybody wins.
--
Eric S. Raymond
Well, I'd rather not be part of a group of people that have an exclusionary and/or elitist attitude. I have tried Linux (I installed Slackware 3.0 lats year), but I wasn't impressed enough by its technical merits to continue using it. The RMS philosophy and the GPL intrigue me, but they're counterbalanced by the rest of the crap I see in the "Linux community." On just technical reasons, ignoring any ideologies, I see no reason to switch. Sure, Windows sucks in many ways, but so does X. Windows crashes, but it has a usable, consistent interface. X doesn't crash nearly as often (though XF86Setup required me to reboot a few times), but its interface pretty much sucks, and is not consistent in the least.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'd say the reason why the "bulk of the interest is in Linux" *is* in fact (at least partly) due to the GPL. The GPL means that companies who adopt linux have to be very public about it, because the GPL requires them to make their source & changes publically available. In contrast, a company could be running a *BSD kernel in their shiny embedded box and no one need know.
And market adoption is driven by "what the other guys are doing." Because the GPL forces publicity, it creates its own fad, and thus its own momentum. Not a technical reason, but a sheer dynamics quirk. A particularly successful meme.
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And each time company X wants the latest features of the next kernel, they will need to re-apply their patches to the unfragmented kernel, or remain using the old kernel. If their patches are worth incorporating into the new kernel, developers will be screaming at Linus to fold it in. If not, they will find it prohibitively expensive to keep re-applying their patches with every new kernel release. And if they continue using the old, patched kernel, they will find themselves at a market disadvantage, eventually to the point that no-one buys their distribution. Fragmentation of the kernel is a non-issue.
Oh yeah, how will we know if their patches are worth applying?
Easy! We have the source. This is how the GPL prevents fragmentation, while the BSD licence allows it.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Their product can be downloaded for free and there are dozens of competitors offering the same thing for a lower price (other linux distros). Let's face it-- most linux people don't need tech support-- and that is the only thing Redhat -really- sells.
Can you say more about what the benchmarks were?
I've read some very convincing papers asserting that various kernel critical paths (and in particular the system call mechanism) are much faster in Linux than in the AT&T-derived unices.
Of course, it may well be that the libraries and userland are faster on *BSD for what you're trying to do. Or it could be that the papers I read lie. I'm rather curious to know which it is.
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Ahh, I see..."It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I'll agree that there's a long way to go yet, both for Linux and all of the Open Source movement, but I think this is definetly the direction things are moving in. SGI is in the process of porting some of IRIX's big features towards Linux and hopefully will use there knowledge to make Linux a high-end server OS. The article Friday about Compaq terminating it's NT for Alpha project is also evidence to support this. Sun will probably be the last hold out and they may never go to Linux except through emulation. But they've got the revenue to pull it off. But there is starting to be some reunification of Unxi.
This is probibly the most important part of re-unification. Each *nix has its strength and the convergence of these strengths is an awesome thing.
Even if there is only a few unices, hopefully there will always be many mail transport agents, mail readers, servers and such to limit the spread of a monoculture virus. Microsoft has seriously weakened its defenses by monopolizing its application market: everyone not only uses Windows OS, but reads mail with Outlook, distributes mail using Exchange, serves pages with IIS, etc.
Apache's dominance on the web is potentially a Bad Thing, for the same reasons.
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I agree. The best company-adoption-of-Linux story so far has got to be SGI, who's promised to port the groovy IRIX features to Linux. Iff this happens, then IRIX users might not feel they've been downgraded... but this is a big iff.
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You, sir, are a clueless numbskull. The Linux community doesn't want you anyway. We need people who actually try to argue and persuade, not insult. Calling someone a "numbskull" because they feel uncomfortable with the amount of chest pounding rhetoric that has infused the Open Source community only shows your lack of tact. As others have pointed out talking to a rabid Linux advocate is much like asking a Marine why they love the Corps, "I love the Corps." "But why?" "I Love the Corps!". This can scare anyone off.
I thought this movement is about choice, apparently you learned your lessons from Ford. "You can use any OS you like, as long as it is in Linux."
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
If you took all the files associated with FreeBSD, and replaced it's kernel (and support programs like ps, lsof, etc) with the Linux kernel (&etc), you would be running Linux. Wouldn't you?
In fact, no. I would be running a FreeBSD system with a Linux kernel. And I suspect it would be pretty much useless.
Everyone is distributing libc6. Some people are still running libc5. Backwards compatibility is achieved by distributing libc5 as well. Forward compatibility is achieved by installing libc6.
Let us see...During the last 6 months, I am receiving about 4 emails a week (on the average) dealing with library incompatibilities between different flavors of Linux. I have seen libc5,
GLIBC, and GLIBC2, each had its own problems. In addition, there are different versions of GLIBC and GLIBC2. Do you actually expect normal people (that is excluding Linux fans ready to fiddle with their system just for the sake of it) use something like this? Even more, do you still insist on the fact that this is not fragmentation?
Has FreeBSD never had changes which are not forward-compatible?
It had. The changes tend to be slow and gentle on the userbase though. Maybe because most of the userbase treats FreeBSD as a tool, not as a fetish?
The whole concept of shutting your computer down is obsolete. First of all, the heating/cooling cycles will shorten the life of your hardware. Secondly, the computing and networking industries are moving to a world of persistent network connections via cable modem, xDSL, etc. Users want acces to their information now. Also, there is a strong movement towards home networking. It would be a shame to not be able to participate in the future of computing because your OS can't be depended upon to stay up and running.
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Ilmari
© ilmari. All rights reserved, all wrongs reversed
Umm, the reason why "{Free,Net,Open}BSD runs the {Free,Net,Open}BSD kernel" is that the {Free,Net,Open}BSD kernel is called the {Free,Net,Open}BSD kernel because it's part of {Free,Net,Open}BSD - i.e., the kernel, in those cases, is named for the operating system.
As for Solaris, well, "uname -s" seems to think it's running the SunOS kernel. :-) (And regardless of where you sit on the "SunOS vs. Solaris" debate, the kernel is called the {SunOS,Solaris} kernel because it's part of {SunOS,Solaris}, so the same point applies there.
Linux systems are a bit different, as they've been assembled from pieces constructed and maintained by different groups; there's no One True Linux System, whose entire source can be found under "ftp://ftp.linuxsystem.org/src"; there's no single complete OS from which the kernel takes its name.
No. You'd be running a BSD/Linux hybrid; it would feel different from many Linux systems, as the APIs would be a bit different, the administrative commands would be a bit different, the twisty little maze of "/etc/rc" files would be a bit different, etc. - and it's not at all clear that it'd be less different from a Linux distribution using one of the usual collection of Linux-distribution userlands than those distributions are from one another.
(If you took all the files associated with Windows NT, and replaced its kernel with a Linux kernel, and wrote an "ntdll.dll" that implemented all the NT system calls atop a possibly-extended Linux API, would you be running Linux? :-))
One thing about how Mandrake is different; I believe that it's optimised for Pentium series processors rather than i386. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure of this.
As far as I'm aware, development of IRIX may be slowing, but it's far from stopping.
Oh, despite ESR's tendency to assume all things good are a result of open source, it's a damn fine article.
Linux is too chaotic to code for.
/proc, /dev/sound, using x86 specific assembly code, etc. When you code make your code as portable as possible. Learn and use APIs that are supported in multiple OSs and hardware architectures.
.... Windows code is has a sprinkle of 16 bit, 32 bit, it is far from uniform but since it is not open I guess we will never truly know. Linux will do just fine since I can use modules if the sound card code is acting up, I could get rid of it. And wait until a fix. And yes a fix will be soon up since everybody can see the code.
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All of this chaos and fragmentation is caused by programming for Linux only. Using
For example if you do multithreading use gnu pthreads.
To reply to the Microsoft internal uniformity rant, Microsoft has tons of APIs last time I remember, AFC, MFC, base API, COM, ActiveX,
To make a long story short the more portable the code the more people see your code, fix your code, enhance your code, hence it lasts longer.
Write once, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite,
I agree with Raymond, actually,I wrote an article to this same effect which was posted in March on Linuxpower.org. You can read the article at http://www.linuxpower.org/display_item.phtml?id=11 1 .
But there is no dispute that the Unix world is slowing unifying. And even as vendors like Sun and IBM try to beef up their own Unixen, they add features to them to make them more compatible with Linux (ie. Solaris runs Linux binaries
I don't think everyone should pat themselves on the back just yet though. There are so many companies relying on proprietary Unix systems with closed source tools (the company I work for uses Solaris exclusivly for everything except a few of our front end apps running in Windows). It will take much to move these companies over to linux.
It would be stupid to tell someone "You need to ./configure that and then run a make. Then you need to do a make install."
./configure, make, make install are the most intuitive statements you could make.
v e people I've seen do in fact shut down properly. The rest sometimes don't even care if they have fsck. And they never forget.
Every idiot knows what the word TYPE means. Sorry, but waht you're complaining about shows inability to teach not a flaw in Linux.
And believe me most people can infer what they're doing from they're typing, as long as you remind them to pay attention.
From that point on
I worked at a help desk, I should know.
Besides, CLIs are easier to teach over the phone than GUIs.
As for those who shut down their PC's incorrectly. I don't have a clue who that is. It's certainly not the majority I've seen in comp labs and while I was working. The most tight ass PC-phobic-I-type-600-keys-per-second-so-I-can-lea
Course there's that granny who needed memory warm-up exercises.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
How happily is sun going to fork over the only technologies that are left to differentiate Solaris from Linux? Like NUMA. Will they just keep selling their product as long as theres a poor sucker left buying it? And then embrace Linux before they're crushed in it's path? Will the seperate unix vendors be cutting their R&D departments? Oh so many questions!
"End-users", in the sense you appear to be using them, don't use OSS or ALSA; they use applications. If the OS can support applications written either to the OSS or the ALSA API, and you don't have to know which API an application uses, why does the availability of multiple APIs make any difference to the end user? (The same applies to any other situation where you have multiple APIs; OSS vs. ALSA is just an example.)
To what exactly is your metaphor referring? To repeat the question I asked in a previous message - a question you didn't bother to answer - in what way would, say, an office application be an "animal" that "likes oranges" or "likes apples", i.e., in what way would it want to use Linux-specific features in a way that can't be abstracted away? (Don't just assert that it would - without an example, I have no reason whatsoever to believe such an assertion.)
Presumably by "they will not take full ability of the OS" you mean "they do not currently make full use of the OS's facilities", given that you say, right after that, "and when OS-specific features are implemented", i.e. that it's not impossible for them to implement OS-specific features.
By "they will be mere hacks to the metaphor system" do you mean that the UI would have to hide necessarily platform-dependent details because the entire desktop environment will be providing a completely platform-independent metaphor? I have no reason to believe that the desktop environment is obliged to do so; the bulk of the desktop environment may do so - just as the bulk of the Windows desktop environment may provide a metaphor independent of whether you're using Windows OT or Windows NT - but there's stuff under the Control Panel, say, that's not the same in the two OSes (if Windows had this wonderful metaphor that completely hides the differences between Windows OT and Windows NT, you wouldn't have control over power-saving stuff in Windows OT, because NT doesn't have that yet).
In what way is this any different from the problems a Windows user might have if they "get beyond" the desktop and start playing with Your Friend Mr. MS-DOS Prompt? If the answer is "you don't have to fire up a DOS prompt in Windows", then perhaps the answer, for those users, is to arrange that they not have to do so in Linux, either.
"Portable" to what? Pipes are called pipes in all UNIX-flavored OSes (and in Win32, for that matter...), so why would a GUI system have to use "pathway" to make it portable to multiple flavors of UNIX?
For one thing, because, for better or worse, most UNIX-flavored OSes, including Linux, don't generally have file systems plugged into their VFSes to support things such as HTTP or FTP access, which, if the "virtual file systems" to which you're referring are the ones I suspect they are, the VFSes of KDE and GNOME offer. There are some who argue that HTTP and FTP access should be provided through the OS's file system API, and implementations of that do exist (often done as, e.g., user-mode NFS servers, or other types of user-mode file systems, so that you're not obliged to shove FTP or HTTP client code into the kernel).
What do you mean by "object sharing"? Are you referring to the object models like KOM and Bonobo? If so, why should Linux have it at the kernel level? There's nothing Magically Wonderful about implementing stuff in kernel mode; I think the bulk of Windows' COM runs in userland.
One might reasonably argue why the object model should be part of a desktop environment, rather than being a thing unto itself (which could be provided as part of a Linux distribution, say), to encourage non-desktop stuff to use it (COM isn't, as far as I can tell, desktop-only in Windows).
The alternative to a library being? All the APIs offered, at least to programs written in compiled languages, on UNIX-flavored OSes and Windows, come from libraries (or code loaded at run time) - even system calls are called as library routines that contain a trap stub.
Most true, Jedi master. I see that you know the force well and it flows as fluid as water. But the fragmentation does have some valid points. Maybe not to the Linux kernel itself. But the OS in generl, those that are forwared by Debain, Redhat, SuSE, Caldera or anyone else.. File system standards are fine, but I dont really feel this is enough. Recently my company went through a whole regoranization (I was heading it). We moved from RedHat based servers to Debian based servers (some are even running the potato now). I was techinically more at ease with Debian, but, my fellow works, those that learned redhat from a book spent many a day bikering at how ugly Debian was (When in fact it was the other way), and how lost they were when they wanted to do something in Debian vs how they did it in Redhat. For normal users such OS changes are fine, but for adminstrators it means a completely different thing. I had to give quite a few seminars to my fellow works and bosses to make them get comfortable with Debian. Why is this happenning? Arnt they all supposed to follow some standard? even if the packgaging systems are different? This is a sad case and getting worse day by day. libc is another problem, some distrubtions just refuse to go up to glibc2 when others are already in glibc2.1, and some companies just put their newest products out in glibc2.1 (Eg: Oracle), when most ppl are running standard OSes that contain nothing but glibc2 at best. Our Oracle upgrade needed a potato upgrade in debian. This came with it's own problems since potato was an unstable OS. I suspect this kind of frangmentation would keep going on. Why cant we have some meetings and iron out the differneces between where files are stories (file system hiraachey standards) and othes. Till that day, I have to waste more time educating ppl and learning different OSes just to install a linux kernel on a box. good day.
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I have the impression that Red Hat expects (and, presumably, hopes) for that to change. In their S-1, they say things such as
and
and (in the list of risks)
Whether the bubble will burst or not is an interesting question. I could imagine it bursting (although it's not the only stock market bubble I could imagine bursting...), but I wouldn't assume that it'll necessarily burst because Linux will necessarily remain the province of those who "don't need tech support".
This is a really nice piece of Linux propaganda, which is ESR produces at an impressive rate. However, his assertions seem to be a bit premature, considering that only one Linux-centric public company exists to date. How can one assert that the *nix industry is converging on Linux, when Linux hasn't even begun to experience the level of commercial pressures felt by its cousins?
Yes, it seems that several big Unix players have come out with modest support of Linux. Don't forget, however, that these companies are still massive entities, and the support that most have flung in the Linux direction is so token (for them) that they can hardly be credited with anything but protecting their own potential interests.
Don't get me wrong. I really like Linux. I use Linux exclusively at home and at work. But the Great Linux Migration is still in its infancy, and there is a LOT of room for corruption and division.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I think that change must be facilitated if the improvements are going to push the boundaries of the possible. Easy changes aren't as interesting.
We agree to disagree. That's fine.
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Yes, but as soon as some /. reader notices the GPL-mandated disclaimer, an article goes up saying "WOW! FooBar systems is running LINUX!!!" and then the tech press --- which increasingly uses /. to do its homework for them --- obligingly follows up with a "mainstream" article some short time later. The press releases aren't required, but the current dynamics make press inevitable.
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>ftp.kernel.org, but a custom kernel of their own, that differs not >just in how it was configured, but in the code itself.
Umm no. The Redhat kernels make more use of modules than say what Slackware does. For instance ppp and sound are modules with the kernels RedHat uses. You basically don't have to recompile the kernel for sound with Redhat. I know.
I can't believe so many people willingly drink the Eric Raymond koolaid. One bullshit article after another for him, and people are begging for more.
His constant factual errors are bad enough, but what really makes his writing so terrible is the constant fake bluster he exudes. I honestly don't think that he believes a lot of what he writes -- it's as if he wants to puff himself to be some badass cartoon character, always foregoing reality and truth in search of an oh-so-pithy one-liner.
I've written before at Slashdot (sufficiently long ago enough that it's no longer in my User Info) that I think BSD usage will increase and that Linux will see a downturn. And I say this as someone who, while preferring NT and Sun machines, is both an owner (at home), an administrator (at work and home), and a fan of Linux, as well as someone who has never even touched or seen BSD except as a user. If not BSD, then something else, but a lot of people who actually use their computers as a means to get things done, and not as a religion or fetish, are both irritated with and embarrassed by the Linux zealots out there. Count me as one who is considering the switch as well. Plus, BSD will also unfortunately get a lot of the zealots who are currently an embarrassment to Linux -- who will in turn be an embarrasment to BSD -- because they won't feel so 31337 anymore when "the clueless" are able to install Linux.
The King is dead. Long live the King...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Perhaps you would call them both Linux, but I wouldn't; were somebody (perhaps Microsoft, to squelch irrelevant "you can't do that, the source isn't available" arguments) to implement a full-blown Windows environment atop a Linux kernel, without providing a userland that looks anything like that of a Linux distribution, I wouldn't call the resulting system "Linux", because it wouldn't feel like Linux, either to a programmer or to a user - I'd call the kernel a Linux kernel, but that's it.
Yeah, perhaps you could then add a Linux userland atop it - that'd be the moral equivalent of Interix, which provides an environment with a UNIX API atop the NT kernel. Once you added the Linux userland, I'd be willing to call the resulting system a Linux system (just as an NT system with Interix is still an NT system)...
...but that's not solely because it has a Linux kernel; it includes all the other code that makes a Linux system look like a Linux system.
Similarly, a FreeBSD userland atop a Linux kernel wouldn't be a Linux system to me unless the Linux userland was present as well.
Of course, in some cases the userlands would collide - would the FreeBSD-and-Linux userlands atop a Linux kernel have, say, a FreeBSD-style or a Linux SV-style or a Linux BSD-style "init"? Were the system to present both flavors of userland where it was possible to do so, but chose one particular flavor of userland for the stuff where it wasn't, if that was a Linux flavor, I'd call the system "Linux with an XXX compatibility package", and if that was a FreeBSD flavor (or an NT flavor), I'd call it "a hybrid, neither fish nor fowl".
You must think Linux users sit around fretting about conpatibity with other distro's
Are you *BSD users this clueless.
Slackware Linux as a system has been incredinly safe and stable (hasn't crashed on me yet!). None of the utter confusion (including fragmented kernels), which IS happening in *BSD.
My impression is that no-one (except developers) really cares about fragmentation all that much. Most programs written for unix are written well enougth that fragmentation isn't a problem. The interface does not seriously change from unix to unix.
noone listens to me it takes ESR before they listen.. maybe I need to feed him my thoughts .... there will be less UNIX versions next year. True64 will probably become part of Linux, as it is moving that way, and IRIX is already planned to go that way. In order to defeat M$ this must happen. Over the next few years there will probably only emerge 1 or 2 unix or UNIX like versions probabaly comprising Linux code in it. It may or may not be linux, but it will contain much of the kernel code, and many of the OS parts. I imagine it will contain a much improved Java parts too. Possibly some sort of Java-Linux-Unix mix. where the OS runs on most hardware (Linux) and the apps run on most OSes (Java).
Only 'flamers' flame!
"Publically" doesn't necessarily mean "put out a big press release"; it could just mean "put the text of the GPL in your documentation, along with a URL people can go to download the source". I have the impression that one or the other of TiVo or Replay use Linux in their box, but, if so, I haven't seen either of them announcing this broadly (which cannot in any way be taken as a certain indication that they don't use Linux).
Yes, the GPL does require you not to keep it a complete secret that you're running Linux inside your box, unlike the BSDL. However:
First bear in mind that both KDE and CNOME are work in progress. .gz, so there is
Gnome does not deserve to be beyond version 0.1, while KDE just
made it to 1.0 with 1.1.1 release. Neither can be taken as a good
example of Linux desktop. KDE 2.0 promises some real apps, and
so does GNOME 2.0. They will probably have enough features to
be competitive by version 3.0, by which time they may run same
CORBA backend and same dnd so coding for one would be roughly
the same as for another (esp. if KDE adds more language bindings,
regardless of how many people need it).
Most people in Linux world do use zip (gzip), so I am not sure what
the difference is, except that winzip is not available (bfd).
Most compressed programs you'll see have extention
quite a bit of uniformity there.
As far as APIs, it is not clear that it is a good thing to have only one.
Besides, they are in no way a part of the "end-user world".
I do think LSB is good, and it would be better if it were folded into
posix, so that noone out there could ignore it. But one set of widgets?
Yuck. If people listened to you, we'd be using Motif without any
alternatives. IMHO, that's worse than all Windows crashes times 100.
That's, like, ten minutes of work.
For the desktop user the advantage of FreeBSD is that it is more 'consistent', easier to install, configure and maintain than any distribution of Linux I know, but the differences are probably big enough to switch, if you have a system that already does what you want it to.
Read what Daemon news has to say about this issue, also chech the back issues.
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I really don't believe that Eric Raymond represents us (for almost any value of "us" you might care to choose). He seems like an OK guy, but it's increasingly obvious that he has lost track of what we (well, I) thought he was doing - representing us - and is now doing something very different - preaching to us.
Matthew.
If by that you mean "moderated up to 1", the answer is "because he didn't post as an Anonymous Coward"; see this Q in the Slashdot FAQ, which says
I rarely shutdown my machine, but I don't keep it on the net either.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Go Hurd!
Alejo.
What's with this title? This article has nothing, whatsoever todo with "The Re-Unification of Linux" ... the re-unification of Unix maybe, but even that's stretching things a bit. How many Linux distros are there? What are the irritating differences between them? Which ones are better for which applications? Answers to these questions would make an article that could justify the buzz-word Linux in it's title.
I've been a Linux guy for a looong time and it's this kind of misleading hype that makes me want to switch to xBSD just so I can hang out with those seemingly less loud and obnoxious BSD people. Is this kind of crap going to drive us linux users into the closet and make us develop secret handshakes and stuff due to the embarrassment?
Hey.... if I write an article about changing a tire and put the word Linux in it, will it get posted at Slashdot?
You have a weird way of choosing what operating system to use.
Why don't you just use whatever works best for you, instead of using whatever OS has spokespersons you agree with?
And what about the "half-truths, omissions, and outright lies" told by the spokespersons for Windows, your current chosen OS?
How bizarre.
Azog
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
The name is Linux Standard Base. You can find more about them at http://www.linuxbase.org/. They have mailing lists for you to contribute. I suppose it is `taking so long' because the number of persons asking why it is taking so long is far bigger than the number of persons actively working on it.
Alejo.
Well, I shut down my Linux box regularly. I live in a small :).
apartment, so my computer is next to my bed and I can't sleep
with fans being as noisy as they are (OK, so the cover on my
case is permanently off
The Linux world would be a better place if all distributions used the same package format, the same system management tools and followed the same filesystem standard. The fact that they don't will not stop Linux growth or acceptance, but it won't help it either.
As for ESR's speculation that Compaq will eventually move from Tru64 UNIX to Linix, well, I'm normally with ESR on most things, but on this one I think he's way off base. For the next few years at least. My reasons for this are:
* The Linux kernel has some way to go yet on the scalability front before it could be considered a potential replacement for Tru64's kernel. Compaqs next generation Wildfire systems will be out soon, with possible configurations of up to 256 CPU's. Tru64 V5.* can scale that high and make good use of it. The Linux kernel will need to be able to match that.
* No one does clustering like Compaq's VMS clusters, and now Tru64 UNIX is getting the same functionality. This puts Compaq's UNIX way out ahead of any other UNIX with the rest of the field (and NT) left behind with failover style clustering. Porting TruCluster V5 functionality to Linux would be a big job. New drivers for the cluster software, new hardware (Memory Channel), the new Cluster common FileSystem, the advanced filesystem (AdvFS), etc. I just can't see Compaq wanting to Open Source any of this, as it's what will set them apart from the competition.
Macka
Does Red Hat not make its own changes to the kernel distributed with the rest of their distribution?
Also, you can say that each distribution is a fragmentation. You can't run Red Hat programs on Slackware due to libc problems, that sort of thing.
>Linux and the Linux community are both too >immature to make a dent in places where 24/7 is >a requirement, not a feature.
And you call NT or its ilk 24/7?!??! I've seen Linux boxen running for months without fail, longer, even. Find me an NT server that's run for more than a week, two at best.
If you are referring to legacy Unix distros, however, they still have the upper hand in this regard.
I can't picture it. Sun has made too much of a commitment to Solaris and is still profiting from it. And as much as I like Linux in particular and open source software in general, I must admit that Solaris is a quality product that doesn't need to be abandoned.
But then, you have to remember, IBM ditched its own web server software in favor of Apache, even though it had invested tons of money and resources into its own web server software.
DES Khaddafi KGB genetic jihad Uzi Rule Psix Qaddafi cryptographic Peking Mossad Legion of Doom Albanian Serbian Saddam
I'm saying, write a piece *for* Slashdot. If it's well-written, original, and on-topic, it'll run.
And I'm sorry, Mr. Raymond, but Cathedrals are things of beauty. Your bazaar vision, well... the peasants can roll up the tents and booths and move on when the weather goes bad. 200 years later there is still a beautiful Cathedral standing. There's a bare patch of dirt over there were the bazaar once sat.
Heh, that's a nice one. What is left standing when an earthquake occurs? The peasants kan rebuild the bazaar in a day, the cathedral will need another few hundred years to be repared. And in the case of a flood, the peasants can pick up the wood from the bazaar, swim to land and build a new bazaar.
Point being, don't take the metafoor too far.
TeeJay
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
Yes! Think of it!
/. on a 2 min refresh so I can be in the GNOW!
:-)
Your Slashdot Title (Score: 3 or higher!)
Your name and cute link
Yes! I can envision myself at the top of the Comment listing, I mean hell! I've got
This is it! This is the one! This post right here will make me famous, and I alone shall represent the community! This is going to hurl me to the top where my dog and I can manage Linux with a birds eye view and I'll never be interrupted by and ICQ message ever again!
Yep. This is the one. I've made it.
wow...you must really be something amazing to be so much better than everyone else. Perhaps you would like to demonstrate your alleged brilliance sometime?
Juln
da you have that backwards.
Insert mind here.
Strange that ESR didn't mention Sun and Solaris, I would like to have known if he expects them to join the trend.
I can't picture it. Sun has made too much of a commitment to Solaris and is still profiting from it. And as much as I like Linux in particular and open source software in general, I must admit that Solaris is a quality product that doesn't need to be abandoned.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
When I first started using linux, I had the same opinion alot do. It was "all this fragmention in the differnet distros, wms, etc. isn't good"
/usr/lib, install it's binary into /usr/bin, etc. You can talk to 10 different people, and they will tell you 10 different places to put things. Redhat will dump every binary in /usr/bin. People that compile like to put things in /usr/local/bin, /opt/bin, and other odd places I can't even think of.
After you USE it for awhile, you see it's a strong point, not a weak one. It's not like Windows(not trying to bash it here), where using Win95 for anything but a desktop is like putting a round peg in a square hole. A linux distro can be centered around easy to use(redhat, caldera), very configurabe(debian, slack), or anything else. But at the core, it's still linux. Linux gives you the power to shave off the sides of the peg for a perfect fit.
Where linux DOES need a standard is on file locations. Like have a program that's follows the "linux standard" will use libraries in
I like to use both gnome and kde aps, I like to change my window manager every couple weeks. I don't like the fact when I go to compile something, it can't because of a library in a different place then where it's looking for.
So I guess that the fragmention is a two edged sword. But at least it's alot sharper on the good side. I think the sharper side helps shaving that peg (^_^)
I didn't miss his point at all. I offered Sam a chance to do something positive instead of complaining. You can do the same. ESR makes his points in a logical manner and signs his name to them. If you don't think ESR's piece was intelligent, go ahead and write one that is. Be original instead of reactive, stick to your chosen topic, and keep it between 800 and 1500 words. And be prepared to get flamed if/when it runs, because no matter what you say, *somebody* will disagree with it. ;-)
I'm not sure why, but I never had to do that. make install took care of everything for me.
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Apparently SGI is not "dropping" IRIX, nor are they spinning off a subsidiary. They do, however, feel that "from an applications standpoint[,] Linux is the right answer".
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Well, I can say again, Thank You ESR for reminding me why I use Be. I am sick and tired of the fighting about who has the best distro blah blah blah. Look, I use my comuter to get WORK done, not installing, patching, building and debugging the OS just to run a simple app. Be gives me a superfast OS that has a simple and clean feel right out of the box.
I just test drove two different distro's, RedHat and Caldera. I am sorry to say, unless you have a plain vanilla box, each install craps out. Now, I install my Be in under seven minutes and one reboot. No six-millions questions and blinking screen and scripts that give cryptic responses.
If any of you out there just want a clean, FAST and easy OS, just give Be a shot. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Eric, I hear what you are saying, but you really need to wake up and see the world as it is.
>I am aware of at least 20 distributions of Linux
Um, you're wrong. There really aren't at least 20 distributions of Linux. What you are seeing is releases of Linux that's been customized for particular purposes and given away to anyone who may have a use for them. For example I know of 4 or 5 "distributions of Linux" as you put it that are really linux on a floppy disk to be used as a rescue disk. A lot of the other "distributions" are basically RedHat that's been customized for a particular language, like spanish or chinese. This isn't the defination of fragmentation.
That's, like, ten minutes of work.
;-) Really, I would hate it if I had to recompile my XFree!
I don't know what kinda supa-dupa-fly computer you have, a 1000 node beowolf cluster? I know for a fact it takes a bit more time on my PPro to recompile all the packages that come with my RedHat.
Also, I personally thought the standard RedHat desktop was a bit messy and the folks at Mandrake did a nice job pre-configuring the KDE desktop (add this to the list of differences between Redhat and Mandrake). This could also have saved me a lot of time, I now did it by hand, after which I ended up with a nice (and a bit bloated) mix between Gnome, KDE and Window Maker.
It just looks like Mandrake is the more polished RedHat. As if Mandrake is the RedHat RedHat should have made themselves. Thank GPL and RedHat that this thing is possible.
TeeJay
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
SGI is doing away with Irix on anything with a single CPU. When Linux works well on 8+ processor clusters (probably by including a great deal of IRIX code), then Irix will go away on the big iron, too.
Nobody I know at SGI (and I know quite a few of them socially) is saying any different.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
More mindless elitism. Nice "community".
-witz
You *did* say that you were considering FreeBSD, didn't you? :-P
But seriously, running an operating system doesn't mean you have to be part of any particular group. You just use it, and get on with your life.
I just don't get it when people say, "I won't run , because advocates are jerks. In case you haven't noticed, advocates of all OSs are mostly jerks (probably including myself). So, by your standard, you'd have to go back to paper and pencil.
Who cares what people who advocate Linux say? Measure it by its usefulness, not by its advocates.
If you prefer Windows, that's fine. I'm certainly not going to tell you that it doesn't suit your needs; it just doesn't happen to suit mine. As others will no doubt point out, X has no interface, since it is a protocol. There are various interfaces that you can use via X, including GNOME, KDE, WindowMaker, fvwm, and, of course, twm. KDE 2.0, slated for early next year, will probably be the most advanced UNIX desktop environment to date. Check it out when it's released. In the meantime, save often. ;-)
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Microsoft works. Some think they are evil, some don't.. I don't care personally. Microsoft WORKS.
Define "works". I'm using Windows 98 on a souped-up Dell PC as my workday computer, and several times a day I deal with crashes and lock-ups. Even simple tasks like writing a document in Word are so prone to crashing that I hit File-Save every few minutes as a hedge against my operating system.
They might not be totally uniform (WinNT->95/98/2000). But they are generally 90% compatible and uniform. They allow people to create programs which run everywhere (Windows is closest to everywhere). Write once.. run everywhere.
While that is Microsoft's definition of "write once, run everywhere," it isn't shared by many people outside of the company. A Visual Basic program compiled on Windows 98 isn't going to have much success on a Linux system or a Macintosh. On the other hand, I'm executing the same Perl script on a BSD system and my Windows 98 machine.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
Actually, Linus said that you can call it GNU/Linux if you want. I don't know where you got that "the official name of Linux is GNU/Linux" crap. Give me a URL or retract it.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
OK, that subject sounds like FUD, but it would make one hell of an attention-grabber if used as a headline for an article. :)
I believe that a strong argument can be made that the oft-reviled fragmented nature of Unix was one of the driving factors behind the emergence of the "share and share alike" Unix software culture which many of us have enjoyed long before the term "Open Source" was invented.
(I would also list a second driving factor, namely the fact that the development of Unix was so fundamentally tied to the development of the Internet, and that Unix users therefore had a means to form a close-knit community from the start.)
For instance, compare MS-DOS. Why did the "shareware" concept take over on that even more prevalent platform and not on Unix? Why did commercial software become the norm on DOS, while we Unix users were used to the fact that whatever we really needed, we could find "out there"?
Because developers could get away with spreading their apps as binaries, that's why.
Binary code as a means of software distribution would never have worked during the early days of Unix, when almost every single installation was so highly tweaked by its local operators as to be a flavour unto itself. If you wrote something cute, you could only spread it as source. Or keep it to yourself.
Even in the early 90's you had to be the size of a Netscape Corp to be able to develop your app for several flavours of Unix simultaneously and distribute the binaries for all of these. Show me the home developer who has a Sparc, an Irix box, an HP workstation and an AIX box sitting on his desk.
If my argument makes sense, then it begs the question whether the emergence of One True Unix (read: Linux) won't have a potentailly very negative effect on what is now called Open Source software.
If it becomes easy for anyone to spread a Unix (read: Linux) app in binary format, won't we see the greed factor (profit motive?) taking over and commercial apps (or shareware or some other form of binary distribution) become the order of the day?
Or is the open source genie out of the bottle once and for all? Will the community factor mentioned above be enough to prevent this from happening?
Just wondering...
+I won't run (os), because (os) advocates are jerks.
Tried to use angle brackets. Arrgh.
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Why is it that having a dozen vendors shipping products which are only mostly compatible is worse than a single vendor shipping a product utterly unlike anything else? I'll grant you that a dozen vendors being only mostly compatible isn't as good as a dozen vendors being completely compatible, but that wasn't the choice.
No, the "Windows Invasion" had nothing to do with Unix's balkanization (nor would a lack of balkanization have aborted it). Instead it was a consequence of IBM granting Microsoft a monopoly on the PC OS market- a decision no one in the Unix world had any effect over. The Unix Balkanization problem was raised after the fact as an excuse ("it's not Microsoft's fault- really!").
If Balkanization is a problem, then Windows has it as well (NT/2K, 95/98, and CE being three _different_ and only mostly compatible OSs). And thus is primed for a (un-Balkanizable) Linux invasion...
...who said he expects 3 Unix to survive, Solaris, Linux, and something other than IRIX. Sounds pretty clear to me that its long term future has been de-assured.
--
Infuriate left and right
My redhat 6.0 boxes use 2.2.5-15 SMP. It's 2.2.5 with some ac patches. I find it very weird that several people seem to think redhat maintains their own "proprietary" kernel or something. Huh? If anyone thinks they have real evidence of this, please come forward with it.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
> [...] why don't *you* write an intelligent piece espousing *your* point of view and send it to me?
OK. Chances are it won't be covered by Slashdot, but it'll make me feel better to write it.
-Sam
Sam
"a pathetic weenie like Torvalds"? All right, Mr. Eponymous Troll...Let's see that whiz bang kernel you've got there. I'm sure it's a thousand times better than anything some "dime a dozen" developer could put out on his spare time. Put you code where your mouth is.
Why should Linus be the only one to decide what goes into the kernel? First of all, because he started the whole shebang. Second, because he's done a pretty good job of it so far. Third, because he has no particular axes to grind, like the hundreds of ppl from HP, SGI and IBM who could "think him under the table". And finally, because you don't have to be a f*cking Einstein to realize, "Hey! JoeDeveloper from HP just submitted a patch which triples the performance of the scheduler. Should we add this to the next release?" All it takes is a reasonably intelligent individual who knows what they're doing, has their priorities straight and their head screwed on right. (IMHO, I'd say Linus qualifies)
Heaven help us if these decisions were made by committee....
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Obviously you did not read his paper carefully. Nobody stepped up to take his place so here he is. That was the whole point of his "take my job please" paper. The moral of the story is if you don't like how he advocates open source then do it yourself.
May Linux be harming the 'unification' of unix?
First of all, Linux seems to be pushing the commercial brands of unix out of the x86 market. SCO is in trouble, and I wouldn't be surprised if Sun stops supporting Solaris86. Linux does not seem to have much effect at all on the sales of Windows NT (correct me if I'm wrong, and please include some links inbewteen your insults to back it up).
Besides that, the avalanche of media attention Linux has been getting lately, in combination with the Halloween document (am I the only one who suspects MS may have leaked this to ESR on purpose?) must be greeted with cheers by a certain company that is currently in court trying to convince the US government that it does not have a stable and untouchable monopoly in the OS market. Since none of that company's direct competitors seem to be getting any richer thanks to Linux, it is probably not seen as a real threat...
Of the available unix variants, Linux seems to be one of the 'strangest', least standard (and perhaps least compatible?).
If Linux really does unite the unix world by simply replacing all others, I very much doubt that regular users of HP-UX, Digital Unix (erm..), IRIX, AIX, Solaris etc will see this as an improvement.
SCO, IBM, Sun, HP, SGI and others must be supporting Linux -one of their own potential competitors- for a reason. My guess is they are so afraid of Win2k-on-Merced, that they will support anything thay may slow win NT even little, and are quite happy with the successful FUD campain against NT by the Linux community.
Telling everyone that something good (linux) is actually the very best thing that has ever happened in the history of the universe may eventually make it look like a disappointment.
---
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
I recently bought a Netgear card (which I returned because of bogus Linux support.)
I have found nothing bogus about the Netgear FA310TX card under Linux. I've got two of them in my Linux boxes and they both autodetect under either Red Hat or SuSE and just work. I never even looked at the floppy or booklet that came with the cards.
You've got the source code. Put your code where your mouth is.
The source(s) for NT is(/are) available. I can't seem to find the web page that verified that. :-(
It is not cheap though (and you don't have the GPL/BSD freedom.)
There is an open source NT version being built.
http://www.reactos.com/
Examples? Do you mean "there's no single API to do (graphics, menus, sound, etc.)?" (Presumably not, as you're talking about end-users.)
Or do you mean "there's no single desktop metaphor"? If so, then why need there be a desktop metaphor for Linux, rather than for Linux and other UNIX-flavored OSes? Or are you thinking about the configuration issues where it might be impossible to use the exact same metaphor for configuring all those OSes (although perhaps end-users won't want to configure things at the levels where that's an issue, and what should be done, instead, if possible, is to let them configure the system at a sufficiently high level that said differences go away - or have the system configure itself automatically wherever possible)?
"Knowledgable users" in what sense? If they're sufficiently knowledgable, that stuff won't be unfamiliar. If they're not that knowledgable, they might be equally confused if they see a "command.exe" prompt and have to deal with pipes (which the DOS and Windows NT shells have, although the DOS one, and perhaps the one in Windows OT, may not run multiple commands with a pipe between them; I'm curious whether the NT shell does implement command-line pipes with Win32 pipes), or other such things.
Depending on how knowledgable "knowledgable" is, the "knowledgable" users might or might not have to use a shell prompt; it may be that "knowledgable" users, in the sense of "not novices", would just use some of the less common utilities, less commonly-looked at control panel items, etc. (and I'm not one of those who think this would necessarily be a Great Loss, as long as you can use the command line, edit configuration files yourself, etc. if you're so inclined - heck, when running NT I've used the command line, manually edited the Registry, blah blah blah).
ESR is right in that the huge number of *nix variations are slowly being abandoned. Over the years there have been hundreds of *nix variations, and it got to be ridiculous to try and support an application on more than a few of them.
Its a good thing the *nix vendors realize there is more money to be made in service and support, rather than tricky features and special proprietary hardware. As more of them are being absorbed by the OSS model, they realize exactly where the profit comes from and focus on it.
It would be a bad thing if there were too few *nix variations, as many knowledgeable slashdotters point out whenever there is a melissa style virus sweeping thru the media. If there were only 10 or so variations of *nix just like there are only 10 variations of Windoze, then an exploit could hurt many more people with less effort.
I doubt there will ever be only 1 version of unix in the future, but it would be nice to see no more than 20 or 30, with most of them touting their adherence to a common standard for libraries and structure.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I am amazed at all the Microsoft FUD. Microsoft has what, now, 30 people who do nothing but read Slashdot and spread FUD?
I work for a software vendor. We make commercial software for Linux. It works on all distributions. It ain't pretty to make it work on all distributions (we basically have to distribute a statically linked copy, along with a dynamically linked copy in order to comply with the LGPL), but so it goes. We run our entire internal infrastructure off of Linux, and our developers have various Linux distributions (heck, my desktop is FreeBSD!). WordPerfect and Applix are our internal word processor and office suite, and both work on every machine in our office, even on my FreeBSD box.
In other words, we're talking pure FUD. Yes, it takes a bit of care to make your software work on all Linux distributions, but a commercial vendor can do it without much problem. WordPerfect does it. Applix does it. BRU does it. If vendor X doesn't do it, that's vendor X's problem, not Linux's.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
ESR's comments here truly outdo the negative attitude seen following the RHAT IPO. In fact while taken in comparison with suck.com's article a few days back, it shows how the community is (or at least should be) reacting to the IPO vs. how the rest of the world views what occurred in the community during the past 2 weeks.
He concisely addresses the whole "shareholder demands" argument by showing that these publicly owned companies are seeing that the advantage in adding to the unix codebase via the linux community.
I argued the other day (in response to the suck article) that shareholders outside of the community don't mean squat in the matter of development. And this is precisely due to the way that linux evolves. However, I do believe that shareholders within the community now realize the importance of their contributions since it breaks down monetarily.
Finally, I believe that the end result, once we've looked past the IPO, will be more of the same. And this is good. The group that did not get the letter will still (hopefully) continue to contribute. Some naysayers say the contributions will be due to the promise of tomorrow's IPO and this may very well be the case for some. But I say the contributions will continue since people enjoy contributing.
If RedHat or any of the other companies must develop something to meet the demands of shareholders, then the product must also meet the demands of the community for two reasons.
1. It must be useful for the community for our own reasons or adoption will not occur, causing the doomed fragment to be weeded from the standard Linux distribution.
2. It must be well developed within the community or someone will be compelled to develop something else to compete. And the competing project may indeed have an advantage simply due to the "anti-establishment" vibes that are prevalent within our group.
Well, I'm glad to see another article in which I can agree with ESR. Sometimes they seem far and few between.
And that's my whole take on things.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
You did okay on your FUD Method #1 (exaggerating weaknesses) with the "mediocre device support". But you need to apply some FUD Distraction Methods for the FUD #2 (outright lies) where you state "no meaningful GUI", since Linux has at least two meaningful GUI's (GNOME and KDE). I suggest that next time you try more extensive "Sandwiching" (distraction method #1), preferably by using FUD Method #1 to attack various attributes of those GUI's. Same goes with the 'ages of cruft' and 'so-so performance', you really need to use some distraction methods to make your FUD stick. If you're stuck with how to do that, go to Microsoft's very own "Linux is a poor value proposition" page, which is a masterful blend of FUD#1 (exaggerating weaknesses), FUD#2 (outright fabrication), and FUD#3 ("spinning" a strength as a weakness).
Sheesh, how much is Wagged paying you anyhow? Whatever it is, it's too much, 'cause you're doing a LOUSY job of FUD! I know you can do better, after all, your firm did an excellent job on the "Linux is a poor value proposition" page...
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
The differences between the distros isn't that great of a problem. The amount of time it takes to adjust to a new distro is miniscule compared to the amount of time it takes to adjust to your first. :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Go to http://www.estinc.com
Yes, our shrink-wrapped commercial software product will run on every commercially available Linux.
I am happily running my 1997 vintage Applix Office on SuSE, Red Hat 6.0, and FreeBSD with no problems. So it's not just BRU that runs pretty much everywhere.
Next FUD, please!
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Seriously, though, don't forget that a large percentage of us out here don't honestly care if all the "users" ever use linux or not. I use Linux because I spend 10-12 or more hrs a day in front of one computer or another, and crashes/freezes/reboots dramatically lower my productivity and raise my stress level. So I choose to use an OS that doesn't do those things. Some apps look different than some other apps (mostly they all look like my E/GTK theme, but some vary wildly from that), and that's ok by me. Anyone who can't deal with that, I honestly recommend they stick to windows.
Besides all that, I know that if/when the hordes of secretaries or what have you DO start migrating to linux, I'm sure as hell not going to be the one supporting them. So what do I care?
Now, when I do get passionate about this is when someone tries to make ME use windows, especially in a server context. As long as I never have to have anything to do with M$ products, though, I don't give a rat's ass who else uses them.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are mine and possibly those of a large majority of people who don't post on /. regularly. They do not necessarily represent the opinions of the 31337 flamers, and zealots who claim to want "world domination" and are guaranteed to flee to some other "cool, alternative" OS as soon as Linux does become popular.
Does not include tax, title, license, void where prohibited, Canadian winners will be required to complete a breif, time-limited skill test.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Why is it that every time an article like this is posted on Slashdot, the other free, open-source Unices (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc.) are blatantly omitted? Keep on writing like this and you'll have every Joe Linuxuser thinking that FreeBSD is a Linux distribution -- if he even knows it exists at all.
How about making your articles less Linux-centric? After all, aren't we "all in this together?" Isn't it "all about choice?"
-Sam
Sam
"HP/SGI/IBM all have whiz bang kernels that beat the beans out of Linux"
/etc . There's a plethora of changes to the system that can only be facilitated by recompiling the kernel and rebooting, and its gui system administration tool (SAM) is atrocious and butchers kernel rebuilds half the time. HP-UX 11 has some improvements (but not enough for me :) Anyways, that's 1 small example. Aix has its share of "annoyances" as well, but I dont feel like writing a whitepaper on slashdot about the atrocities of commercial Unices tonight.
Heh..
Either you're a tad misinformed or you and I have differing opinions as to what qualifies as "whiz-bang." Let's pick on HP for a moment. HP-UX 10.20 comes to mind, for example. Its still widely used (unfortunately) in some places. HP-UX 10.20 doesnt even do PASSWORD SHADOWING out of the box, for christ's sake; and, it has alot of binaries and links to other binaries in
Let's give credit where credit is due. Linus (and the swarms of other contributors on the net) deserve kudos for making a decent piece of work; It has its good points and weak points. The *BSD's, Solaris, and others all have their strong points (well, maybe with the possible exception of SCO *g*) as well as weak points.
This bickering amongst people who all profess to enjoy using the unix variants of their choice doesn't do much to further *any* cause.
my 2 cents.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Linux is fragmented moreso than any commercial flavor of Unix ever will. (snip) We have GNOME and KDE (need I say more?). umm.. Yes. You need say more, as I don't understand what you're getting at. KDE and Gnome, while different beasts, interoperate pretty damn well. I recently installed Gnome on my (previously) KDE system, and had no problems at all. KDE software ran very well in Gnome (including the KWM!) If you prefer to code for KDE, use QT, if you prefer Gnome, use GTK. Software from one will run in the other.
Why the G3, anyway? I've never quite figured that out... I thought it was called 'Mesa' or 'Mesa3D'. It's v3.x right now. Maybe that has somethng to do with it.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
I suppose this is nice for the GNU/Linux advocates out there, but...
I can see lots of programmers getting very annoyed about this one and leaving. The reason they're doing this isn't technical superiority, it's cost. By switching, they can remove their own OS teams from the equation and replace them with teams porting the x86 machine code to their architecture (BTW - how long's it going to be before someone reailses that having Linux as platform-dependent is crazy? Assembly code should all go!), thus saving them heaps because they can ride on the backs of the utopian programmers. If I was one of them, I wouldn't want my code being used to benefit all these companies in this way and I'd rapidly stop contributing code.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Actually, I am seeing duplication of effort. How many distrobutions now want to make an easy to use and install Linux? Let's see:
RedHat (well, sort of. At least easy installs)
Mandrake
easyLinux
StormixLinux
CorelLinux
Project independence
Caldera
sooo many others too, I've lost count. There's so many distributions now that have goals of making it easy. I think many distributions is good if they all have different goals. But now some distributions are re-inventing the wheel. Let's take Mandrake, for example. The wanted to bundle KDE with Redhat. Fine. Now Redhat comes with both KDE and Gnome, and let's you choose which at install. What advantage does Mandrake have now?
Besides these, there are so many other distributions that all seem to want to do the same thing. So while ESR wasn't talking about distributions, it is time to consolidate, join together and stop obsolete projects. We all know Linux can win with servers and large corporations. The news about SGI dropping Irix and NT is expected. It's time, and we all know it too, to put Linux on the desktop. If more users use Linux, it means less Microsoft monopolies, better software, more hardware support. And right now, Linux has a long way to go. How is wasting effort going to help us get there? Ok, so we have two desktop environments, KDE and Gnome. That's okay I guess. But there is too many options for the user, with none of them being what (s)he wants.
Linux: Long live the source code.
What? freebsd doesn't exist in its own bubble. To start with, let's look at your free xBSD options and tradeoffs.
If you use freebsd, you can't run on a sparc or a sun3, or any architecture except for x86, and recently the alpha.
If you use netbsd you don't get the optimization on the intel or alpha that freebsd has, and I believe that the driver support except on those platforms is lagging. Also the number of hackers available to write drivers is far less then for freebsd.
If you use openbsd, you don't get SMP support. I don't know about drivers on other platforms, but my guess is that they and netbsd do a lot of cross-development.
Heck, if you don't use openbsd then you're constantly playing catch-up on security issues that theo and co. are keeping on top of.
Each bsd has to worry about breaking compatability with other bsds if they want to make a kernel change, or a driver interface change.
In each case you make sacrifices. If a bug is found in any of the xBSD kernels the bug then has to be cross-checked against other kernels, and coordination between groups and regression testing has to ensue. This has been pretty well done afaik, but it's still an issue that the same fix has to be applied to 3 different code bases, and regression testing done seperately (4 if you cound bsdi, which you have to pay for, but which shares code with the other 3).
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
One thing that one one had brought up yet is that
many of these unix vendors are also converging their architechtures by saying that they will be moving to intel's IA64 in the future. What converging on Linux will bring to them is a larger binary compatable user base with which to attract third party software vendors. Right now the large number of combinations of unix versions and architechtures is an impediment to getting popular software ported.
the other IA64 factor is that the unix system vendors who are moving to that architechture are probably realizing that it is cheaper for them to help in port of an operating system than to have to do one on their own
I'd have to disagree with that. The main allure GNU/Linux has for me is that it's free software. On its technical merits alone, I don't like it. I've used it before (Slackware 3.0), and I was not impressed. X especially is pretty shitty for a windowing system, unless you need to do networked stuff (which I don't). The whole "configure everything by editing textfiles" thing doesn't impress me either.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Perl 5.004 or Perl 5.005. Netscape or your favorite packet sniffer. You make the call! (What I'm referencing has been fairly thoroughly fixed. However, for almost a month dependency information was a lot like HELL.
--- What we don't know is usually sneaking up behind us as we speak.
Well, the main reason I was going to use Linux in the first place was because of it's advocates. The GNU project and free software seem like worthwhile causes. If I ignore the advocacy from both sides, then I really don't have a need to switch. I don't need extensive uptime, and this box isn't a server.
As for X being only a protocol, yes, but it's also the foundation of the whole windowing system. Many of the problems are caused by X itself, and the various window managers try kludges that sometimes work around them, but usually only partially. Even something as basic as cut and paste proves problematic in X, while a 1984 Macintosh can cut and paste between apps without any problems.
Lots of other things seem strange, nonintuitive, or just downright dumb to us Windows users. Why can't you configure X within X itself? What's with the separate XF86Setup? Why do you have to run XF86Setup to run X? Why doesn't X have good auto-detection routines and some decent defaults so you only need to run XF86Setup if you wish to further customize X? Why is installing a new kernel an 8-step process? Why isn't there a decent archiver (one that lets you extract a single needed file, like zip, rar, arj, zoo, ace, etc., rather than tar.gzip which requires you to extract the whole thing)? Why isn't there a decent simple text editor? (no, pico doesn't count, and if you consider vim "simple" you're insane) Why is ppp so damn hard to configure?
I can think of a few more, but that's enough for now.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, this is very nice to hear, but I'm sure this news would have a much better impact if it was somewhere other than Slashdot.
I realize that many Slashdot users don't use Linux - I was one of them not too long ago - but I assume anyone who has read more than 2 articles on Slashdot realizes how successful Linux is becoming. Posting an article on Slashdot about this is preaching to the choir.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
It occurred to me recently that the Unix tool model has always been hindered by there being so many incompatible, competitive Unices out there.
Every vendor tries to differentiate their version of the tools. The vendors actually benefit by making you feel uncomfortable on a competitors version of Unix after having gotten used to their way of doing things.
Now, with Linux and Open Source in general, everyone can standardize on a set of very powerful tools. The Unix tool model, which is just so powerful, is unleashed at last with potentially the whole Unix community (and hopefully, eventually the whole World-Wide computing community) in harmony.
It's about time.
(Hey, can I be a "technology evangelist"?)
Would somebody please write ESR a reality check? He obviously needs one. It's PAINFUL to read this.
First off, WRONG. IRIX is not being dropped, only scaled back. Development will be continued in very limited proportions, and support and bugfixes will be continued.
Secondly, DEAD WRONG. IBM has about fifty times as much invested in Monterey than Linux. I'm not going to cite my sources, but that's fact. They're banking a HELL of a lot more heavily on Monterey than they ever will on Linux. Reason being that they stand to make more off Monterey, since it's basically AIX with iBCS only it's for PowerPCs. It runs Linux bins. So it's got one hell of a leg up on Linux with better corporate acceptance and wider support.
ESR really needs to check his facts before he goes spouting off.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
your company here.
shelby != ford
#include truth.h
What have you been smoking? (And where can I get some =)
what about the "rpms"?
oh and the make-kpkg (for kernel making)
Only reason I switched to Linux is because there weren't any xBSD books with media at our local bookstore from hell years ago... only Slackware. Did you know that NT has a commandline scheduler? I just discovered this...it's called "at" I'm totally serious. :)
(In this context, "on Intel" presumably means "on IA-64", not "on x86".)
...but it seems to me that any so-called unification of this past year is overly connected to ESR's own style of [Oo]pen [Ss]ource. If 'unification' means 'comercialism' (and hype) we'd better hope that big biz doesn't just up and wreck the freedom of Linux (fat chance).
I'm certainly not a religious fanatic in the o'reilly vs stallman war, but if 'unification' is 'interoperability' he's obviously forgetting other (more?) important details such as posix, gcc [and gpl in general], and gnu tools.
Perhaps if 'unification' simply means 'common enemy' then we should thank MS more than linux, har har. Keep MS running then, I say, otherwise all the distros (at least those who are big biz wannabees) will start their own embrace and extend tactics.
If 'unification' means 'locked in to the Linux' way then perhaps we'll all just be chained again to another one true way [sic] until new freedom fighters emerge to release us from the tyranny. *nix may be flexible a stellar OS, but this is, after all, only perhaps the second day of creation in computer history.
If 'unification' means 'eyeballs', then we're really screwed up to think that having everyone Linux-enabling their software is going to make the world a better place. Don't forget that every one of those publicly gambled companies is bound by law to serve the interests of their gamblers (oops, stockholders) alone, and will simply change their biz strategy away from open source the moment they feel it doesn't serve them any more.
Are we stupid, or what? Of course these big companies like SGI, IBM, and many more, want to line up behind *nix, and want the latest buzz to succeed. It releases them from subservience and/or fighting over the crumbs that MS leaves behind in the mass consumer world. It is not that traditional UNIX has failed them technically up until now, it's just that it doesn't have the buzz.
Oh well, enough flame bait for one night (berlin time).
Just one distro is a bad thing, especially in regards to linux. Here we have a platform where distros can compete and leapfrog each other because they have access to the source to their opponents improvements. This is great. Not only that but all the other little things that differentiate them and give you choice while still enabling you to run the same programs and window manager. I recently switched from RedHat to Mandrake because I could download the .iso and burn the cd. Maybe when RedHat offers an .iso and has a little better kde integration (like having qt-devel install by default when I choose X development instead of just gtk) I will go back. Mandrake is great in that it is the same as redhat in all the important ways, but has differences and additions that I like. And if X RedHat based distro comes out tommarow that has the redhat base I know and love and some additions I like I'll use that too... It is called the GPL and it and competition inside the community is a "good thing". And for all you people who are going to Debian flame me I am used to the redhat file tree and package management, and it offers me no reason to learn a new one, however effortless it may be, right now. And when it does my fav RedHat based dist will grab it and incorperate it. And to give my $.02 on the flame way up there debian, redhat, slackware are all linux, they have pretty much the same programs and libraries, and if you can't figurure out how to download and install new/different versions of those libraries than you deserve to be confined to windows and install shield IMHO.
I have The Complete FreeBSD right here.....Second Edition. Latest copyright 1997. Was written with troff and formatted Dec 16 1997 running on FreeBSD 3.0 Current. I can't tell what release of FreeBSD I actually have, I don't know where the CDs are... prob 3ish though.
How much has changed since then?
How similiar dissimiliar are the 3 BSDs? I have a SparcServer 630 MP next to me. It's pretty much just making the electric company rich. Can I run a BSD(Net Prob) on it? It's got some wierd bus (has a fiber interface on it among other stuff)that Sun stopped supporting after Solaris 2.5.1
I'd like to put this baby to use but Solaris 2.5.1 is too much of a pain. (useradd vs. adduser etc.)
TIA
...which suggests either that distributions aimed at end-users should offer all the APIs likely to be used by applications (OSS and ALSA, for example), or application writers should limit themselves to APIs present in all distributions, or application writers should bundle an implementation of said API with their application, if possible, and install it with the application if it's missing, or that they should do something such as trying to load up the API libraries at run-time with "dlopen()" and find symbols in them with "dlsym()", and fall back on other APIs or disable the feature that uses the API if they fail (I have the impression Windows apps use the latter two strategies).
To what are you referring here? What do you mean by "implement a Linux feature into GNOME"? Providing support for a Linux feature, e.g. having a tool that shows what hardware you have by scanning the appropriate parts of "/proc"? If so, why sould that be "a hack to the system to make it work"?
To which modern UNIXes are you referring here when you say "certain other OSes"? SunOS 4.0 doesn't have "dlopen()", but it's not "modern"; SunOS 4.1 has it (it may have been the first OS to implement "dlopen()", although it was originally an AT&T invention - I think 4.1 came out before the first SVR4 release, which also had "dlopen()"; no, "dlopen()" wasn't a Linux invention). SVR4-flavored UNIXes have it, the open-source BSDs have it, Digital UNIX has it, sufficiently-recent AIX's have it; HP-UX has its own shared library mechanism, with its own equivalent of "dlopen()", but may now have a "dlopen()"/"dlsym()"/etc. wrapper.
Yes, that's a problem; that's why some applications are distributed as libc5 binaries. I suspect that, over time, there will be few systems with only "libc5", and vendors will probably choose some flavor of glibc. (How many apps these days are distributed as a.out binaries for systems with Linux 1.x kernels?)
...if you don't count the non-x86 ports of NT (and the non-x86 ports of Windows CE). However, I have the impression that relatively few app vendors supported/support those platforms...
...and the same may end up being the case for Linux, so, for better or worse, any mass-market end-user base for Linux may end up running it only on PC's.
To which sample are you referring? The "90%" sample? Yes, it'd be random, in which case, as I said, I suspect that 90% of them have never tried to get anything to run on Linux, as they've never tried Linux.
Spiffy. Do I win the two-week vacation in New York? (If the fact that I guessed the Windows user would probably burn the first CD, at least with the current state of Linux, comes as a surprise to you, you might want to think about checking your prejudices at the door next time. Hint: just because I indicated that your statement about "90% of computer users can't get anything to run on Linux" was rhetorical rather than realistic, because "90% of computer users" haven't tried Linux, that doesn't mean I think they'd find Linux a snap at present. That doesn't mean that this will never change, although I suspect that, as a mass-market OS, Linux is unlikely to be more than a runner-up in the near to medium-term future, and may never be more than a runner-up - but that may be sufficient to let it be a reasonable desktop OS.)
Maybe it wouldn't have been moderated down if it contained less insults and more facts. Your post, at least, was able to offer a hint of fact.
If a post is nothing but emotional outbursts and insults, it SHOULD be moderated down. It is nothing but noise.
You don't feel, then, that an opinion carries more weight if it has someone's real name attached to it? I know that there are valid reasons for posting anonymously, but someone who isn't prepared to stand up and be identified with the view they're expressing cannot expect those views to have as much of an impact. Shouts from the crowd are always more likely to be passed over.
Not that anonymous views are in any way less valid; just that they're less likely to make an impact.
--
Don't imitate. Enervate.
a clue. Flexibility is one of the best things about linux. I can make my computer look and run the way I want it to look and run, and you can do the same to yours. Its all about choice (FREEDOM). Thats why I use Linux, for the freedom. Most of that freedom comes from the GPL. Sure MS works, but it doesn't give you freedom. I don't understand your comment about Linux being chaotic to code for. I don't understand your comment about KDE and Gnome not designing for Linux. Theres a reason we have portable languages like C. Do you want them to code GNOME in x86 asm? No thanks, I would like to run Gnome on my apple powerbook. Smoke better crack,
SGI is dropping IRIX. They're spinning off a subsidiary--very likely because SGI has contractural requirements to support IRIX. SGI itself is switching to Linux.
Your 50x figure is probably right. Given the higher development costs associated with proprietary software, the fact that it's a multiple of the resources devoted to Linux is not a good refutation of ESR's point.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
One problem I can see is that vendors with custom Unix versions will probably be unable to contribute patented ideas to Linux, though I'm not sure about this. It may also happen that, if Linus can't be persuaded to accept enough contributions from large companies, one of them could decide to start maintaining their own branch of the kernel, which would probably divide the Linux base between corporate/hobbyist users again (as the former would be more likely to use the "corporate" branch of Linux).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I'd say ESR is one of the main reasons I'm still using Windows rather than Linux. Articles like this, filled with half-truths, omissions, and outright lies are what's kept me away. Of course, ESR isn't the only guilty party, much of the Linux "community" behaves likewise.
IRIX is not being dropped, nor is it being replaced with Linux. IRIX is still being supported and developed for SGI's high-end servers, which Linux cannot, and most likely will not, run on. Linux is for low to mid end computers, not enterprise-class servers. That's what IRIX is, and will continue to be, for.
Linux is not "re-unifying" UNIX. There are still many different fragments of UNIX, ranging from Linux to FreeBSD to Solaris. The various BSDs seem to mess up ESR's arguments, so he just omits them. Typical.
Anyway, RMS's writings had almost convinced me to switch to Linux. Bruce Perens has done a good job as well. Unfortunately, the rest of the Linux community, along with ESR, has done the opposite. That, and the fact that I REALLY dislike X, is going to keep me in Windows, at least until I get some spare time to install FreeBSD.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, for the sake of truth, I have had two customers tell me that they benchmarked FreeBSD against Linux (same application software), and FreeBSD won. The FreeBSD people have good reason to be much more dignified about losing in the market (instead of whining like they do).
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
And checkout the Lothar Project>.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
I'm a new Linux user, and if you go to #linuxhelp and ask for assistance, the first question people ask you is, "What distro are you using?"
Just to drive the point home, I recently bought a Netgear card (which I returned because of bogus Linux support.) Anyway, in the readme that came with it's "special" tulip NIC driver, it had instructions for Red Hat systems, and for SuSE systems.
In my opinion, Linux is already pretty freaking fragemented.
C'mon get with the program.
We have 40 some distributions. VA is Linux centric, PenguinComputing, Tons of advertising magazines cover Linux/BSD/Unix topics.
Second and most important: Who just declared war RedHat vs Debian or IBM and SCO vs SUN and Compaq?
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
That's where he's coming from.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Eventually, the Linux kernel will be kept alive by corporations who has an interest in the kernel because they can make money off it. These companies might be working together to reunify Unix, but we'll see some fragmentation between companies and the bleeding-edge hackers. And I think we'll see this very soon.
Secondly, DEAD WRONG. IBM has about fifty times as much invested in Monterey than Linux. I'm not going to cite my sources, but that's fact. They're banking a HELL of a lot more heavily on Monterey than they ever will on Linux. Reason being that they stand to make more off Monterey, since it's basically AIX with iBCS only it's for PowerPCs. It runs Linux bins. So it's got one hell of a leg up on Linux with better corporate acceptance and wider support. ESR really needs to check his facts before he goes spouting off.
If you cant give references to your claims then the only one around here spouting off is you. "I'm not going to cite my sources" indeed. You wont cite them because you have none, otherwise you would have.
You have been assimilated.
That is assuming companys ever really adopt Linux. Which I doubt because it would mean dropping a couple decades worth of code and millions of dollars in IP into Linux.
Except for the fact that companies such as HP, SGI, and even Sun could then liquidate their OS divisions. A couple of Linux developers, half a dozen support agents, and a much lower bottom line. How much do you think it costs to develop/support/maintain a proprietary Unix? If they go with linux, they're at least no worse off than the competition in terms of the OS, and they can focus on building the applications / selling the hardware that will make them all kinds of green.
You also get sucked into this really cool cycle...the more ppl buy into Linux, the more companies support it...the more companies support it, the more ppl buy into it...the more ppl buy into it... etc. If you're a hardware vendor with a kick-ass product, it's a hell of a lot easier to ride the wave than go off on your own and create a proprietary OS that only a handful of developers outside your company are developing applications for...
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
#include "humor.h"
/sbin/lilo".
Debian is a disease. Sympyoms include "the debs", a type of siezures called "OSS", and a skin rash called "make clean && make menuconfig && make dep && make zImage && make modules && make modules_install &&
You should embrace it. It bring enlightenment to many. Hopefully, it won't permeate your brain completely and bring about a psychosis know as "fanaticism".
--------------------------
Oh their users go on about their techncial exellence and talk about how much more secure and stable they are. Tell any one of those fuckers to PROVE it and he'll sputter and stammer and make a fine noise. And that's ALL he'll do.
There's some severe hostility showing in all that. You should seek some professional help.
Jeez, man. Pull your head out of your ass. I'm a poor college student with a small budget, and I'm no genius- but I can make Linux do wonderful cool things like play my damn StarCraft game whenever I find the need to. I can use it to write my term papers, my reports for French (because of the incredible internationalization) and all of my presentation crap. I'm not that exceptional- maybe you use the wrong distro if you can't get anything done on Linux.
I mean, what else do I need from a computer? I can do email, type my papers, make presentations (with the KOffice components, which are a blessing), do 2D and 3D graphic design (GIMP and Blender), use the Net with Netscape Communicator or Mozilla, program in various languages (C++, C, Python....), Instant Message with my friends, and play the greatest computer game of all time- StarCraft. What else could you expect from a computer? I don't know, but I also expect it to stay up for weeks and months at a time- which Windows FAILS at miserably.
Peace, and maybe it's time to re-check some of what you said.
I assume that's rhetorical, as I suspect "90% of the computer users out there" have never tried Linux, and not just because they think it'd be too hard to make it work. If 90% of the computer users out there wouldn't be able to get anything to run on Linux were they to try, then, as you note, Linux wouldn't make a better desktop, at least for that 90%.
I suppose the KDE and GNOME desktop environments and the kwm, enlightenment, and blackbox window managers I use are a figment of my imagination.
I suppose the fact my Cyrix 6x86L 200 (150 actual) stands up to my friends' P233s Winblows machines except when playing Quake is another figment of my
imagination.
I suppose the fact that every device except my Windows only printer works is yet another figment of my imagination.
I also suppose that the hack I downloaded to drive my printer doesn't really work because we're talking about a windows printer.
At least have the guts to use a login name.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
This is an excellent point and I wish I'd made it earlier. FreeBSD's unity is one of the main reasons I use it -- I can get the latest source from a single CVS repository by issuing a single command, then rebuild the entire userland with a single command. I can also install any of over 3500 programs in the ports collection with a single command. If that's not unity then I'm not sure what is.
-Sam
Sam
Thus, your response had nothing to do with the message you were responding to. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
To what sort of things are you referring here? How would "word processors, office applications and so fort" work better if they "[took] full ability [presumably meaning "took full advantage"] of Linux", rather than merely using, by and large, an API common to all modern UNIXes (plus APIs supplied by the desktop environment they use, those APIs being, in turn, implemented, ultiplately, atop an API common to all modern UNIXes).
Or are you referring to the desktop environment components themselves (window manager, file manager, panel, applets, etc.)?
How does Linux "run" in this context, and what are examples of how they'd feel "foreign"?
BTW, if Linux is as fragmented as you say, would not even "designing FOR Linux" be designing for "an abstract computer", even if it's less abstract than designing for modern UNIXes?
What happened to that Linux Standarization project (sorry I can't even remember the name)... They were going to have a base distribution which every other distribution would have to be compatible with to be considered part of the standard. I remember Slackware refused to participate and Bruce Perens (I think) got in an argument with the group then I never heard anything about it again. Are they still working on it?? If so, why is it taking so long?? Just wondering, because the longer we wait the more fragmented linux will become and more and more difficult to standardize!
"I'm still using Windows rather than Linux. Articles like this, filled with half-truths, omissions, and outright lies are what's kept me away..."
So you are saying that you use MicroSoft, because they never resort to "half-truths, omissions, and outright lies".
Please reread your post and maybe you will realize how ignorant it actually was.
As far as your opinions on ESR, I tend to agree. After reading C&B, every other article/paper I read for entertainment only.
Awesome!
That seems to be what ESR is saying. "We've got Linux, what else do we need? Linux is the One True Operating System!"
Personally, I'm glad that (to use his cited example) OSF/1, er, Digital Unix, er, Tru64 is still around.
Lack of diversity is always bad.
--BIFFSTER, BeOS and NetBSD wanker
Who cares about the infighting, and FUD articles..
I use Solaris/Irix at work.
I use Linux at home.
Who cares about the.. "DistroX sucks DistroB Rocks". I use what works for me. I am especially sick of the "Linux in the Enterprise" arguements. I love Linux, but try to put it on one of my E4500's and I'll kick your ass:)
Awesome!