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More on Queen Elizabeth II and Linux
moonboy writes "I know Netcraft exposed this awhile back, but here is a new story. This quote says it all: "We'd been running Sun Solaris since 1994, it was coming to the end of the life cycle for early machines and direct replacements would have cost a lot of money. We'd been running Linux on Intel [computers with Intel processors] internally for testing and had been impressed with their reliability and you can't beat them in the bangs for your buck department. It blows Sun [computers] out of the water and, as a web server, Linux is great. So we did some load testing internally and managed to get some more than satisfactory results." 'Nuff said. Here is the Sunday Times (UK) story" The article also says the Queen is a "keen web surfer." Good for her! Do you suppose she reads Slashdot? ;)
(shrug) It's not as if she'd be the first queen to do so. Perhaps the first for whom it's more than a hobby, though.
What is the big deal of going into a froth at the mouth over whether the Queen actually does make the decision over the operating system and hardware for her website? This is simply harmless and good publicity for Open Source software.
If we keep up all the raving as to Her involvement or whether the UK should be a republic, we would end up with people calling Richard Stallman a communist (he is not!). Some people love to flame bait.
Oh! and here is my tuppence worth...
God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!
Hip hip and Tally Ho!
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
This is actually not a bad idea. Applying for a warrant to use the 'by Appointment to HM The Queen' logo costs something, but I don't think it's a huge amount. How would it be if the community applied on behalf of, perhaps, Linus, so that the right to use the logo was held in trust and could be aplied to anything with a genuine Linux kernel? If other people think this is a good idea I would be prepared to investigate what would be involved and report back.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Possibly, but it is well known that Prince Philip is a regular poster at Segfault as "harry@angryanddrunken"
Now the 85 websites run by the Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency, together with the entire open government campaign are run on five Dell 2300 Dual Pentium II 450 machines, each with 512k of RAM and 27 gigabytes of hard disk space. ;)
wow a whole 512k of ram? thats not too much
Obviously this should be 512 Meg.. My company uses these machines themselves, for servers we build... They are some powerful systems.
But, I thought Dell didn't sell barebones systems (no OS)? I do believe they sell some Linux preinstalled, but not bare as stated in the article...
In any case, maybe this will help me convince my managers to dump this Windows NT BS we are forced to use on these server systems.. ACK!
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Linus Torvalds supplier of Open Source operating systems to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Now that's a great signature file!
Guess most /.'ers are newbies in comparison
David Off
Perhaps it starts with a knighthood. ;)
I can just imagine the Queen having to look at all the pornographic banners. Poor dear.
I thought I saw somewhere that Dell will sell with no OS in Europe, but I can't find the reference now.
No, this is perfectly right. Don't you remember the visionary who said that 640K is enough for everybody? So when they need more power, they can still add the missing 128K ;-)
Pah! Anyone can surf the information superhighway (dontcha just love that phrase). What we want to know is, can she whoop her royal subjects asses in a Quake deathmatch? ;)
Are you opting for a Royal Linux distro or a Royal Slashdot? :-)
-- Nothing is as subjective as reality --
...but it sure is impessive, running a webserver on the configuration described in the article:
Now the 85 websites run by the Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency, together with the entire open government campaign are run on five Dell 2300 Dual Pentium II 450 machines, each with 512k of RAM and 27 gigabytes of hard disk space.
--
two-thousand-zero-zero
party over, it's out of time
had been impressed with their reliability and you can't beat them in the bangs for your buck department
;-)
I don't guess you can, since you can get it for free.
Though really, I think this is great. Score one up for the Royal Family.
Insert mind here.
The quote does indeed say it all, who knows, with a royal seal of approval we might manage to get GNU/Linux in places that hitherto have still remained very anti it (like my place of work, where we rather bizarrly have a Netware web server.
/., God bless ya your majesty. :)
Oh, and in case she does read
RT
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
I think saying that Her Maj herself is now a firm supporter of Linux is going a bit far... Especially when the same article later states that she has no idea what her own website is run on.
Even if she's a "keen web-surfer" she's probably got a dedicated manservant to move the mouse around and click where she tells him while the royally approved browser (I wonder what THAT is) is viewed on a forty inch flat plasma screen by
the royal person.
But it does seem that someone in the UK government reckons Linux beats everyone else for web server performace...
-- "Sponges grow in the ocean. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen."
Having a 'by royal appointment' logo on the Linux box would be quite cool. Given that -- until recently -- it appeared on cigarette boxes, it's a marque (is that the right word?) that's been devalued, but it still has a cachet that can only help Linux.
A quote that should be used widely:
"The Government Information Service systems manager Mick Morgan, says Linux was a "no brainer"
choice."
So the queen is a surfer, eh? Rob: check the logs and see if anyone's real address is queen.elizabeth@monarchy.uk ; we should also probably check the back stories to see did any anonymous coward post a 'one has first post' comment.
Pretend there's a comment here about the connection between Diana and Windows.
...reminds me of that Monty Python episode where the cast was told the Queen would be tuning in...
Wasn't Linus invited to some big to-do in Finland thrown by royalty?
Brings to mind a few slogans...
Linux: Delighting the crowned heads of Europe.
Linux: Software by the people, propping defunct monarchies everywhere.
Linux: The crown jewel of OS's.
"Why do people criticise, say, checkpoint firewalls, for giving out the fact that they are checkpoint firewalls, when you telnet into them?"
Probably because the admin controlling it is a nitwit and is perhaps reducing security because you doesn't know how to implement a proper rule set?
As for potential exploits -- there are probably many that can be devised by people looking through apache source code as well as those "freebies" from the alerts on their security notification page.
Yes, it was obviously a joke -- however, I'm getting a little tired of the "it's redhat 4.x,5.x,6.x so it must be insecure" attitude paired with the "I've seen that movie hackers so it must be easy to hack" jokes.
----------
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=http%3A%2F%2Fs innfein.ie%2F sez ...
sinnfein.ie
sinnfein.ie is running Apache/1.3.3 on FreeBSD
So take that, Elizabeth Windsor!
www.noraid.org ... www.noraid.org is running Apache/1.2.6 FrontPage/3.0.3 on FreeBSD
This is news: the Irish Republican got FreeBSD and the English monarchists got Linux. Sounds like a fair fight now.
Opps. You're right, Sinn Fein is not the IRA ;) mea culpa.
But I don't know what sort of political conclusion you want to draw from that.
Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen's website would be on linux? Probably none. It shows that linux is spreading, and spreading rapidly. We know this when OFOS (our favourite OS) springs up in unlikely places.
(Whether the Queen herself uses linux is irrelevant to us.)
In this case, linux has replaced SUN: again, we may use this as anecdotal evidence that linux is eating into SUN space. Which is bad for SUN of course.
Question: How will SUN react? By supporting linux?
The Unionist are dinosaurs?
Does this mean that Linux can now display one of those nifty "by appointment to her magesty the queen" logos?
QUEEN ELIZABETH NAKED AND PETRIFIED
I can see the new messages now.. I'm scared.
Considering the Queen has been using email since 1969, I reckon she knows damn well what OS she's running on her webserver. In fact, she probably configured the whole thing herself! Anyone who has 30 years experience of the Internet deserves a little respect ;)
Finland doesn't have it's own monarchy, although they toyed with the idea of adopting a German aristocrat as their sovereign. The idea was mooted during the transition to independence from Russia, but fell through when Germany capitulated at the end of the Great War.
Prior to that, Finland had been a Duchy of Tsarist Russia and a province of Sweden. The Swedish link is why so many Finns speak Swedish as a first language and Finnish as a second (in some cases not at all). During the Tsarist era it was briefly illegal to use Finnish - an attempt at crushing national identity that was later used by Stalin in the Baltic States and elsewhere.
Chris Wareham
After a set of favorable press coming from disclosure that the Queen of England surfed the web and ran Linux on her dual PII boxes, several other royal families quickly followed suit with press releases of their own:
It was revealed that Queen Beatrix of Netherlands is an avid Perl programmer, generating her own cgi-bin scripts.
King Harold of Norway casually let it slip at a state dinner that he recently moved from awt to swing for his new Java interfaces.
Unconfirmed reports surfaced that Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia has been one of the top contributors to distributed.net. He denied all reports and points to his seti@home scores in defense.
King Simeon II is testing the waters for a decree declaring Bulgaria as the first "Open Source Republic".
King Carl XVI Gustaf of Norway was revealed to be secretly posting replies to slashdot.org with subject titles of "Beowolf", "First Post", "who cares about RAM prices in Taiwan" and "Microsoft sux".
Royal families around Europe are uniformly denying that the rash of recent press reports were designed to make them appear more "common" and similar to the regular people.
Sinn Fein is the Republican political party, and lots of shady links between the SF leadership and the IRA have been suggested. None of them have been proved beyond a doubt, although many Unionists believe Gerry Adams sits on IRA committees.
Regardless of the truth, both Adams and Trimble (the Unionist leader and Orange order member) walk a fine line in appeasing the publics need for peace and the terrorists fear of `defeat'.
Chris Wareham
Check out:
http://www.junkbuster.com/
for a GPL'ed proxy to filter out banner ads, etc.
Nice name btw, ch-chuck :)
:) (sorry a little off-topic)
The original AC posting about the republic might have been referring to Australia, not England, as Australia will be having a referendum on November 6th on this very topic...
In Aus's case it makes sense, as currently our head-of-state (Queen) actually has no relevance to Australia at all.. doesn't even LIVE in our country... etc etc... I say vote YES
- Chuq
Replying to myself (bad form i know):
someone posted link to the Royal warrants FAQ down below, http://www.royal.gov.uk/faq/warrant.htm, and it turns out the crest i see on my pack of JP Blue is not that of one of the Royals! Anyone know what crest it is?
it's a shield with 3 little boat type things stacked top-left, grid top-right, castle below with suns on either side of it. lions rampant on either side and surmounted by a knights helmet with a crown on it.
Are John Player's taking the piss with a fake look-alike royal appointment? Or is the crest and appointment real?
(guaranteed someone on slashdot is into to heraldry)
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
KH.. maybe Koninklijk Huis (Royal House) ?
Oh well.. now that I have shown my ignorance again, I'd better sign off
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
>but do you really want the Royal webpages getting defaced and/or being unavailable, even for half an hour?
:-)
Er, yes. Yes, I do.
I would quite like them to be defaced with obscene messages and inflammatory statements protesting the existence of the bunch of web-toed, banjo-plucking leeches that own them.
Thanks for the offer.
Stu.
{sorry, not exactly on-topic, but I wanted to make it clear that not all of us limey's are fans of the Windsors - just in case there where any doubts)
-- Stu
i love the fact that all the Linux zealots spend 90% of their time flaming Microsoft, and then secretly wonder why Linux can't overtake them. Spend more time freely developing software instead of whining! Didn't think so...it is a good game to talk but in the end it is only a few idealiatic driven people who have to support the whole structure...and as soon as Red Hat gets its claws into things you can say goodbye to any noble ideas of free software.
Oh man, get out of here! Flamebait, alright, but redundant?! TWICE?
I wasn't making those things up you know.
Queen hires spin doctor
Sunday Times Internet 'Journalism'
I think both these points are very relevant to the story.
...seven of nine "double-0" agents surveyed preferred embedded Linux in their dangerous toys.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
*humbled*
That was about the time that I first saw Colossus: The Forbin Project!
:)
"Classic UFO's
Try reading the article. It's way down by the bottom...
The Palace couldn't say whether the Open Source Linux community would be entitled to use the By Royal Appointment tag - it would have to have its product used for a certain period of time first to the satisfaction of a member of the Royal Family, before an application for the tag could be made.
pdubroy AT yahoo DOT com
YET MORE PROOF FOLKS!
this just ultimately proves that linux is more scalable, robust and mature. it far outperforms solaris, costs less, and is 100 times more secure.
we have known this for years as we watched our open source gem beat all others hands down.
one of the premier linux team alan cox has even shown how solaris cannot scale, and their SMP implemntation is nothing but a third rate hack. where is the talent at sun? definately not on the solaris team!
you cant beat open source, and now a stamp of royal approval!
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, AND GOD USES LINUX!!!!
Hmmmmm - 512K of Ram - always wondered why the government websites were so slowww :)
It's good to see they're using Linux on the QE II.
We already know how lousy NT is on big ships...
(Oh wait, you mean I had to actually read that article? Damn...)
The Queen of England can not affort UltraSPARCs? She must be hurting for cash.
-hh
But it does blow Sun away in 'Bangs per Buck', which was the point being made.
I agree that a big Solaris box will outperform *any* Intel system, but at the lower end you get a much better hit/cost ratio with Intel & Linux.
I've also heard reports that Linux can outperform Solaris on low-end Sun hardware. Don't know if it's true though.
I actually run Solaris as well as Linux and FreeBSD because I like it.
Feed the hungry. Save the whales. Free the mallocs
Why is NetWare a bizarre choice for a web server? The primary purpose of a web server is to fulfil client's requests for files. NetWare excels at this. It certainly performs a lot better than another proprietary OS I could mention.
My my, the hardware requirements for running a linux webserver are falling faster and faster all the time. By kernel 2.4 we won't need memory at all!
--
Don't all products used by the Queen get than snazzy offical seal that says something like "By appointment to Her Magestry the Queen" or something like that?
ttyl
Farrell
...who supports the British out of Ireland, but thinks the Queen is O.K. for Canada.
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Do you suppose she reads Slashdot? /.
Yes, I do read
Knight the guy, to slay the MS-Dragon. :D
Indeed she does ;)
512k of ram?! rock ass!!!111 linux roolz dood!21~
have you actually read the article? If so you might have some idea of what the post referred to ;-)
A computer you buy today will outpreform something thats 4 years old. I'd still go with sparc architecture, its expensive, but worth it. How many of you honestly have PC's that have run for 4 years non stop?
I wanted to see what my old school was running.
www.devalcol.edu is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on Solaris
newton62 (56617) Karma: Bad
But now all the slashdotters (a force greater than Linux+Apache)are going to run over and pound their server to a pulp and the royal family is going to interpret it as an over-exuberant show of support from the subjects, and shall endeavour to recolonize us.
Somebody bring Prince Chuck up to date: today it's free and open source upon which the sun never sets, and they should rededicate their efforts to more important issues: why, after all, if everybody had been using Imperial measurements, we wouldn't have lost that satellite, now would we?
Because at least one of the Apache developers is British, Apache should be eligible for knighthood due to its excellent service of the crown's site.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
>Then you, sir, are a scumbag and not a gentleman ;)
:-)
:-)
:)
My bag is not *completely* full of scum, but I take your point
>it doesn't just have to www.royal.gov.uk, it could equally well be freshmeat.net
Whoah! Easy, tiger! I didnt say I was going to actually *do* it - I was just exercising my constitutional right to free speech which, thanks to the Schmindsors & the UK's lack of a written constitution, I don't actually have.
*Obviously* all punk-ass script kidz and crackers are pure evil & have no more right to breathe God's clean air than weasels...
...but I doubt if I would be too displeased if royal.gov.org suddenly got redirected to something more, ahh, forward thinking in a God hates/loves fags style.
I am more opposed to what the Royals stand for, rather than them personally. The Queen, I should imagine, would be a perfectly decent grandmother in different circumstances, and would doubtless be a leading light in her local women's institute or church group. Similarly, Prince Phillip would make an excellent London cab driver with his broad range of bigoted & racist opinions and inability to shut up.
>And letting on "it's RedHat 5.2" is probably supplying someone with a little too much. IMO
Ack. All together now..."Security through obscurity is no security at all..." La la la, la la la...
vive la revolution, or something.
-- Stu
...is that the real enemy is Microsoft. :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
According to the article, it`s the whole of the open.gov.uk site (public access to governmental departments) as well. This indicates that it`s a Civil Service rather than a Palace decision. And I think it`s more important that it be noised about that the Civil Service (traditionally and stereotypically very conservative people) are using Linux than that the Queen (who did not, after all, make this decision) is.
dual PII boxes with 512K each? For very, very small web sites ;-)
Is it just me or is consensual Reality becoming more weird as the Internet evolves?
I mean, 5 years ago, the idea of the Queen surfing the Web in 1999 would have seemed like something out of Bruce Sterling's head.
Don't get me wrong, TIAGT (This is a Good Thing). I say we should push for even more weirdness!
Vote Weird!
"Classic UFO's
Linux servers creep into businesses and palaces for two important reasons, they trust the security of such a server more than say NT, and because its cheap. Later on you have to look after the server anyway, don't tell me about cost of ownership or such silly MS FUD. On the other hand Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing. Oh yeah, and count the Queen in to the people who are hooked on internet surfing. PS: that other bloke is a fake
RedHat 5.2 is ancient, apache 1.3.3 is buggy (insecure? quite possibly)... so thanks for the information!
Just an idea... I wouldn't have let loose what it was running on, myself - but then again, it would be interesting to see if they have crack-attempt logs in the manner of antionline, and so on...
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
The article also says the Queen is a "keen web surfer." Good for her! Do you suppose she reads Slashdot?
Maybe QueenE2 is Nitrozac.
But what will get nominated? ...perhaps Linus himself for having invented such a wonderfull product?
Would he get it tatooed on his forehead? Maybe someone should nominate him for knighthood. He already has an "honorary" doctorate, why not call him "Sir Doctor Linus Torvalds"?
(I'm not from the UK, so I'm not sure how blasphemous it would be to suggest such a thing. But if someone knighted Elton John...)
The site must not get a lot of hits if they are trusting it to Linux. Linux does not "blow Sun out of the water" when it comes to web serving.
Netcraft says NT3 or Windows 95. Well, I suppose the company's website really isn't an NT4.0 sort of job. :)
I was going to finish this out and submit it to segfault, but I don't really see that much potential.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Should do the trick...
Now, that would be an interesting scenario for AQ:E's ATL.
:)
Possibly more fun than playing as Austin Powers vs the Fembots.
"Bacon, Karlsson, Ome Henk."
Anybody remember the old Hewson story about how Linux was the PC Program from Hell? He works for the Sunday Times. I wonder what the fool thinks of this?
Then I'm sure RMS would want one, too. Probably :)
want it called GnuKBE though.
-harry
For information about Royal Warrants, see:
http://www.royal.gov.uk/faq/warrant.htm
Notice the sentence which says:
The Royal Warrant is granted to an individual, not the company...
--
Fredrik Henbjork
http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se
Jeez, where'd they get that conclusion? I mean, it's a nice article about how some government mandarins listened to their techies and made the Right Choice (of course it helped they were trying to save money), but going from "we installed a few linux web servers" to "the queen is a linux supporter" seems a bit much. Ho, ho, but that's just me, I'm not a journalist and I don't like making conclusions I'm not firm on.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
People may not be aware of this, but the Sunday Times is just another tatty Murdoch rag. It quite oftens runs stories that later turn out to be untrue (Like that particle accelerator making a black hole underneath New Year).
Please don't assume because of the name that there is an iota of truth in this. You wouldn't believe everything you saw on Fox, would you?
some prominant people have economic sense - from what I understand the monarchy has been under some pressure to justify their existance, some people would like to establish a republic and the royals trying to clean up their media image, hiring media public relations consultants. This is certainly a good way to show good will towards their people, i.e., we're willing to do some work for you, not just take your taxes and ship 'em off to buy tacky faux-luxuries from foreign window shops to assuage some venal, banal vanity.
Chuck
{ my thesarus is wearing out }
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Disclaimer: News International, publisher of the papers in question, is my current employer.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Yeah lets become a republic so we can be just like the YEW-ESS-AY. That would be so cool. They don't have any class divides. No poverty. No rich/poor problems. No wealthy individuals putting society down and abusing their wealth. Hurray for a republic. The monarchy is the root of all evil. Funny how you marked this down as a troll. Truth hurting or conscience hurting?
It is amazing how articles I read just here or there and then days later see it posted on slashdot. I remember reading about queeny getting linux forever ago and first read this posted article on linux.com. Slashdot news is usually quality nerd stuff but so many times recently I have been scratching my head why some of this stuff got posted. I hope I am the only one that feels this way.
------
Life is only easier if you a.) use all M$ or b.) avoid the traps set by M$ for non-M$ users
Still I wonder... It will take some time I think but if everything goes well it is IMHO very likely that they will come to a conclusing that Linux has indeed been the product they were looking for and that it should get the royal seal of approval. But what will get nominated? Linux as being a product, RedHat as being the shipping company, Apache as being the part which did it (if they only care about the webserver part), or perhaps Linus himself for having invented such a wonderfull product?
I personally think that some of the options I menationed could be overshadowed by some major turmoil in the "linux scene". And I wonder if it would be really a good thing for us. Just think about it; suppose they will nominate RedHat and it will get this mentioned 'royal seal of approvement'. I'm somewhat convinced that there will be major discussions coming up and it will be some time before we'll hear the end of that. Would not really matter I guess but since getting such a seal is (as far as I know) still something special you can bet it will attract some attention from yet a complete other line of media (not strictly computer based). "royal seal of approval stirrs up linux comunity" ? ;-)
I guess thats a little bit to negative but still.. It can make you wonder. Anyway, it does proof that things are going the right way indeed and that the Linux fever is spreading rapidly. Hm, can't remember Windows ever getting a royal seal and I'm not really surprised indeed. ;)
Ok, just a revolution then. Just a little one?
You are the same decaying organic matter as the rest of us.
Of course not. Linux FUD is easier to find elsewhere. Besides, I'm sure she likes news sites.