How exactly is Debian making a big deal about this?
They just decided to put the documents that don't meat DFSG in a non-free directory. It's not a big deal.
Slashdot is making a big deal out of this perhaps... And btw a lot of mis-informed comments like this one and were moderated up last time so don't believe everything you read here.
There are only 273 LDP documents that don't meet Debian Free Software Guidelines. A lot of the authors of these articles probably don't care too much if people translate their documents or if people add things to make them distro specific etc. However, unless the author gives specific permision then it is illegal for Debian to do so.
Seriously though, as I look down the actual list of non-free documents I have a hard time seeing what the big deal is. Many of them don't really apply to Linux these days. Some dealt with old versions of X, the 2.2 kernel, old versions of red hat, old hardware, or integrating Linux and OS/2 for example etc. Some of them are amusing and have historical value like the coffee-howto. I was surprised that the apache-faq was non-free but that's about it. It's easy to forget how fast things change in the Linux world, reading through the list reminded me of that.
Conclusion: 1) Don't believe everything people say on slashdot. 2) Most people are happy with licenses like FDL or other free licenses so please consider using one. 3) If you don't use one Debian doesn't hate you, they'll just put your document in the non-free directory.
btw: If you want to know whether your LDP document does not meet DFSG just check this list. I really doubt your document is on it.
The problem is that a gazillion people bought the CD with the broken RPM. That means that it has to be fixed a gazillion different times.
What should have happenned is that the distro shouldn't have been sent out with a broken RPM.
But given that it was, what Abiword should have done was put a big bold link on their web page saying that "Red Hat 7.1 shipped with a completely broken RPM. Click here to fix it." That link would take you to a page with two instructions.
1) download _this_ ( with a link )
2) rpm -i/path/to/file/
Instead users poke around wonderring what the problem is and how to fix it. The version of Abiword online is much more recent but it talks about all these depends and stuff and so people aren't sure if it will work for Red Hat 7.1 or if they will have to mess around to fix it. Users don't want to screw around with that and so they just decide to save often and hope that it doesn't crash.
Also, it could be that Red Hat packaged that software themselves, I don't know.
And Red Hat's bug tracking site is not as easy to navigate as debian's.
And Red Hat doesn't do enough to educate users about how to update their packages automatically. With Debian it is the first thing that users learn how to do.
I respect Red Hat a lot. They hire many great programmers. They have done a lot for the Linux community. But they really need to work on user interface issues better.
You use debian and not Red Hat so you don't understand how badly broken the Red Hat abiword package was.
In debian a package that awful would have been fixed within a month at least. It certainly wouldn't have made it to debian stable.
I think that this is a Red Hat problem rather than a Abiword problem. But it is a problem.
Abiword no doubt is still getting tons of email from that one really really buggy package that was shipped months ago.
The solution is:
Red Hat needs assign someone to test packages before they ship.
Educating users to post bugs to Red Hat pages instead of to Abiword.
Make updating to newer version straighforward.
I don't like to advise most people to use the most recent kernels. I know that sometimes you need to for driver purposes.
Right now, for example, I'm using 2.4.17-pre6 because it's the first kernel with drm support for sis. But that was clearly marked in the changelog.
For most people, I just say they should probably stick with their distro's kernel. Those will be more thouroughly tested.
Anyways, it doesn't matter to most end users if the changelogs were longer. Only a minority of end users would be able to understand them or care. Take Andrea's changelogs. They are normally quite in depth. Here is an actual excerpt:
Only in 2.4.15pre1aa1: 10_vm-13
Latest vm updates. Most important if we take a swapin on
an exclusive swap cache that is getting swapped out (so
locked) we don't need to lock_page or to do_wp_page, we
can takeover the swapcache despite it's locked, if it's
exclusive. This is possible because we can learn if it's exlcusive
without the need of taking the page lock thanks to latest Linus's saner
locking recent changes. So this update still delivers non blocking minor
swapin faults, _but_ without wasteful cows.
I mean... wasteful cows???
Of course, I'm fairly sure that if you wanted to write some really great changelogs then either kerneltrap.org or linuxtoday.com would post them for you. I would definately read them.
If you understand Portugese then Marcelo is funny man.
But sadly, it seems like you are a typical ignorant American who only knows how to speak one language. And you do not even spell it correctly--humor is supposed to be spelled humour.
I can understand that the English language has not many jokes of its own and so when you see a Portugese speaker you want him to tell jokes. But Americans don't have an advanced sense of humour and can't understand it even if it was explained to you.
Oddly enough, I find this attitude all the time on linuxnewbie.org of all places. People are always advising newbies to install stuff from tar files instead of rpm. But with a modern system this is not a good thing.
As another poster already pointed out, there are too many packages on a typical Linux system for one person to keep track of. On my computer I have just over 1000 packages installed.
535~.$ grep "Status: install ok installed"/var/lib/dpkg/status | wc -l
1012
>> I guess I just have a thing for knowing exactly what is on my system.
That's exactly why you should use package management. There is no way someone can keep track of over 1000 packages for even something like 7 years. If you are an employee you might not still be around in 7 years.
>> why can't I just have a nice page saying something like: "you need these packages to [install|use|have sex with] this package?
>> I guess I've been burned one too many times by updaters that accidently install older modules over newer ones simply because it didn't "know" better.
Apt-get allways tells you what is going to be installed.
ep13:/home/carp0110# apt-get install gnome-gnibbles
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
gnome-games-locale
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gnome-games-locale gnome-gnibbles
0 packages upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 70 not upgraded.
2 packages not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 612kB of archives. After unpacking 1768kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
If you don't want to install the other packages just type 'n'.
Also when debian changes a config file it always shows you the change and asks you if you want to do it. I sometimes am not sure and make a backup of the original just in case.
The really good thing is that debian stores the old copies for you in/var/cache/apt/archives/ so you can downgrade back to the old version if something does break.
Package management is nice for new users, but more importantly, it is good for people who don't want to reinstall their operating system every 5 years.
I think Microsoft should be punished for abusing there monopoly status. Especially when you consider that they have already been found quilty and all.
But it's a bad idea to punish software companies for security problems.
Open source products have less security problems but they generally have less money to spend on lawyers as well. I think that they would suffer more than Microsoft.
For the kid who DoSed yahoo and cnn a while back. They put him a government reform school for 8 months.
That is enough punishment for a silly prank.
And I can't simpathize with the people who blame the users for openning the attachments. Teaching users not to open emails that have "Hi" as the subject line is only a short term solution. Trying to get users to remember which types of files are executable is not an option either. (Until a year ago, I assumed that.doc files were not executable.)
A better solution is to not allow executable attachments which end in.doc,.vbs, or.exe onto the network.
An even better solution is for Microsoft to fix their programs or for people to not use Microsoft products.
Another comment already said it, but I guess it's worth saying again since your comment got modded to +5.
There have been several versions of LDP. Some comply with DFSG but some don't.
A typical copyright might say something like this: "This document may only be distributed subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the LDP License." But the "LDP License" is linked to the LDP Manifesto which does not allow modification.
It's the versions that ban modification outright that are the problem.
DFSG has no problem with giving credit to authors.
I guess I have to disagree with most people in this thread about the users needing education to, "not open attachments."
The problem is a matter of user interface more than education. Microsoft products should not make it so easy to execute data.
As far as evolution goes, I would say that developers as well as users are at the caveman stage. It should be much easier to do ordinary things with computers.
Yesterday, a professor was me about setting up a web page. She wanted to do much of it herself because she wanted to do more advanced things then the school provided web pages did. She was talking about setting up a webserver and some can of a "chat board" where students could discuss things. The thing that makes this interesting is that she has no idea about anything to do with computers.
Somehow she got the idea that just because setting up a web server and a bbs should be easy to do that it actually was easy to do. Hah! In fact the average computer user has a better chance of getting struck by lighting than being able to set up a bbs on their own.
You brought up transferring files between computers. This really should be as simple as sending an email. But frankly it's not. I once took hours to set up an ftp server. ICQ is my current favorite so far as ease of use goes but even then there are problems with fire walls etc.
At school I often want to transfer files from my home computer. But unfortunately, I am behind a firewall at home so I can't do it directly. What I end up doing is, when I'm at home I ftp the files to a temporary ftp site. Then I ssh to the computer on campus where I want to put the files. (This computer doesn't have an ftp server). Then from that computer I ftp to the temporary ftp site and download my files.
What a horrible horrible mess! Also the ftp protocol is utter crap itself... It's insecure. It continually seems to get binary and text files confused so your data gets screwed up. It doesn't have let you continue a download if you started but got disconnected.
I really can't blame the users if they don't want to deal with computers any more than they have to.
>>If you can dream it up, its probably been done (within reason).
I think that's far too optomistic view of where we are.
Right now, I would say that we are the caveman stage of using computers.
There's tons of stuff that I've thought of that I'll never have time to write... Right now I'm working on some software that I think is fairly unique and inovative. I'll tell you in a month what it is maybe...;) I've never heard anyone doing it anyways. And I'm just an undergrad.
If you look at things like napster. Everyone thought about writing it but only one person actually did.
Full disclosure is good but it's best to have a fix available before you disclose. Sometimes the fix is just to turn off Wu-FTP and switch to a different ftp server. But everyone tries to agree on a fix before they announce that a package is buggy.
If you have a Kernel security bug then you you mail it to Linus or Alan privately.
If you have an apache bug then there is a private list for that.
If you have a debian bug there is a private list for that.
I can't think of any major project that doesn't have a private list to discuss security.
Red Hat made a mistake when they made the security problem known before the agreed time. This isn't a matter or agreeing Red Hat or not. Red Hat admits that an employee released it by mistake and they appologised.
"Ballmer has denied the settlement is aimed at boosting the company's market share in American schools. He said money from the settlement could be used to buy software from Microsoft competitors."
So... Ballmer thinks that even if people were given the choice they would still install Microsoft software.
What is depressing is that he is probably right. Microsoft does have a monopoly on the desktop after all.
I think that Microsoft should just give the schools the money and let them do what ever they want with it. Buy desks or chairs. New basketball uniforms... What ever the schools wants.
It's ridiculous to pretend that giving a billion dollars worth of software to schools costs Microsoft anything. Probably it costs them 4 million dollars in packaging. But they can more than make that up from the advertising they get as a result... Microsoft has probably spent 500 million advertising XP and 2k already.
That isn't even a punishment. And they have been convicted, right?
According to the most recent netcraft survey 1 in 10 servers running IIS as a e-commerce website or a secure website still has a back door installed from the Code Red virus.
I don't know how they got the figures. But Netcraft is traditionally very even handed and reasonable.
This new virus probably won't help those figures very much.
So remember... If you buy from a web site running IIS you have a 10% chance that your credit card number is going to be sent directly to a guy who calls himself Hax0rDo0d.
I don't want to flame MS for this since customers demand that no password be installed by default. But on the other hand theres no need to go over board and buy from hax0red web sites just to be nice.
>>So the virii basicly evolved, it started pretty harmless but soon got worse.
I think they've ALL been extremely harmless up to this point. Sure there are still tons and tons of rooted boxes out there from Code Red. But that's not the worst thing that could happen.
I don't think most people realise the destructive power a million little pcs connected to the internet can have.
Forget about fifteen year olds DoSing Yahoo and CNN for a couple days. A million computers could easily take out all the phones in DC for a couple days. That would be expensive I think.
Or instead of just deleting a couple mp3 files the viruses could do harmfull things to the computers they infect. Stuff like destroying the monitor. Then destroying the Bios. Then erasing the hard drive. That's the kind of thing I'm afraid of.
Also any company that sells software that horribly insecure by default should be thrown out on the street.
Perhaps you don't remember the Red Hat Pirhana episode? In the Linux world software with a default password is considerred shocking and outrageous. Even if it's pre 1.0 like Pirhana was.
>>and a decent way to keep track of more than 10 open windows/programs.
That's what I try to say. Right now I have 9 windows open and 8 windows minimized.:)
My solution is to use Enlightenment with the an ever so slightly modified Cyrus theme. The Cyrus theme is critical. It is the only one that I have found that behaves the way I want it to.
The Cyrus theme looks depressing as heck. People ask me if I'm gothic or something. I've been looking for different theme but this is the only one that behaves the correct way.
Also Enlightenment really needs to be configured propperly.
I have a tiny monitor too, so that makes it harder for me to handle a lot of open windows.
Carmack makes a good case for why this would be reasonable to do in certain cases.
ATI says that they optomise their driver for some other popular games. I would be interested to know which other games. I doubt they could list them all for pr reasons but it would be cool if they would just list 2 or 3 other games that they optomise for.
If you look at the growth of the kernel you'll see that the main parts have basically stayed the same size (in terms of lines of code) since 2.2.
By the main parts I mean everything except drivers. The largest parts of this are the file system and network code. The file system grew a bit when Rieserfs was include into the kernel but it's a tiny increase compared to the rest of the code.
Drivers make up more than 75% of the Linux source code. And this driver code is growing rapidly.
People talk about the fact that you can cut things out of the Linux kernel if you don't want to use them. This is true. But it's even more true to say that if you did want to use everything in the Linux kernel you would have to buy a lot of hardware.:)
>>It is not in our best interest that it change, because the only way it will change involves there being a hell of a lot less market for programmers.
I don't know why you think I would care about other programmers. And I'm fairly confident I can get a job regardless. Probably those other programmers should get a different job if they can't keep up.
Slashdot Mirror
They just decided to put the documents that don't meat DFSG in a non-free directory. It's not a big deal.
Slashdot is making a big deal out of this perhaps... And btw a lot of mis-informed comments like
this one and were moderated up last time so don't believe everything you read here.
There are only 273 LDP documents that don't meet Debian Free Software Guidelines. A lot of the authors of these articles probably don't care too much if people translate their documents or if people add things to make them distro specific etc. However, unless the author gives specific permision then it is illegal for Debian to do so.
Seriously though, as I look down the actual list of non-free documents I have a hard time seeing what the big deal is. Many of them don't really apply to Linux these days. Some dealt with old versions of X, the 2.2 kernel, old versions of red hat, old hardware, or integrating Linux and OS/2 for example etc. Some of them are amusing and have historical value like the coffee-howto. I was surprised that the apache-faq was non-free but that's about it. It's easy to forget how fast things change in the Linux world, reading through the list reminded me of that.
Conclusion: 1) Don't believe everything people say on slashdot. 2) Most people are happy with licenses like FDL or other free licenses so please consider using one. 3) If you don't use one Debian doesn't hate you, they'll just put your document in the non-free directory.
btw: If you want to know whether your LDP document does not meet DFSG just check this list. I really doubt your document is on it.
What should have happenned is that the distro shouldn't have been sent out with a broken RPM.
But given that it was, what Abiword should have done was put a big bold link on their web page saying that "Red Hat 7.1 shipped with a completely broken RPM. Click here to fix it." That link would take you to a page with two instructions.
1) download _this_ ( with a link )
2) rpm -i
Instead users poke around wonderring what the problem is and how to fix it. The version of Abiword online is much more recent but it talks about all these depends and stuff and so people aren't sure if it will work for Red Hat 7.1 or if they will have to mess around to fix it. Users don't want to screw around with that and so they just decide to save often and hope that it doesn't crash.
Also, it could be that Red Hat packaged that software themselves, I don't know.
And Red Hat's bug tracking site is not as easy to navigate as debian's.
And Red Hat doesn't do enough to educate users about how to update their packages automatically. With Debian it is the first thing that users learn how to do.
I respect Red Hat a lot. They hire many great programmers. They have done a lot for the Linux community. But they really need to work on user interface issues better.
You use debian and not Red Hat so you don't understand how badly broken the Red Hat abiword package was.
In debian a package that awful would have been fixed within a month at least. It certainly wouldn't have made it to debian stable.
I think that this is a Red Hat problem rather than a Abiword problem. But it is a problem.
Abiword no doubt is still getting tons of email from that one really really buggy package that was shipped months ago.
The solution is:
Red Hat needs assign someone to test packages before they ship.
Educating users to post bugs to Red Hat pages instead of to Abiword.
Make updating to newer version straighforward.
Right now, for example, I'm using 2.4.17-pre6 because it's the first kernel with drm support for sis. But that was clearly marked in the changelog.
For most people, I just say they should probably stick with their distro's kernel. Those will be more thouroughly tested.
Anyways, it doesn't matter to most end users if the changelogs were longer. Only a minority of end users would be able to understand them or care. Take Andrea's changelogs. They are normally quite in depth. Here is an actual excerpt:
I mean... wasteful cows???
Of course, I'm fairly sure that if you wanted to write some really great changelogs then either kerneltrap.org or linuxtoday.com would post them for you. I would definately read them.
Actually, it's not inevitable. The core kernel code hasn't grown significantly since 2.2 which was released in early 1999.
By the core I mean everything except drivers.
But sadly, it seems like you are a typical ignorant American who only knows how to speak one language. And you do not even spell it correctly--humor is supposed to be spelled humour.
I can understand that the English language has not many jokes of its own and so when you see a Portugese speaker you want him to tell jokes. But Americans don't have an advanced sense of humour and can't understand it even if it was explained to you.
In the end you have to learn Portugese.
The question was completely niave, but Marcelo being the diplomat that he is did not want to point this out and embarass moonboy.
The question assumes that Marcelo is not currently "The Man" when in fact Marcelo is quite clearly "THE Man."
As another poster already pointed out, there are too many packages on a typical Linux system for one person to keep track of. On my computer I have just over 1000 packages installed.
>> I guess I just have a thing for knowing exactly what is on my system.
That's exactly why you should use package management. There is no way someone can keep track of over 1000 packages for even something like 7 years. If you are an employee you might not still be around in 7 years.
>> why can't I just have a nice page saying something like: "you need these packages to [install|use|have sex with] this package?
If you use debian, already do.
>> I'm probably too anal retentavie on this issue, but when I look at the filesystem I do not want to be saying "what the hell is that?"
Not too anal retentive at all. Here again package management is the solution to your problem.
Pretend I don't know what package installs zipsplit.
Ah... zip installs zipsplit.
>> I guess I've been burned one too many times by updaters that accidently install older modules over newer ones simply because it didn't "know" better.
Apt-get allways tells you what is going to be installed.
If you don't want to install the other packages just type 'n'.
Also when debian changes a config file it always shows you the change and asks you if you want to do it. I sometimes am not sure and make a backup of the original just in case.
The really good thing is that debian stores the old copies for you in
Package management is nice for new users, but more importantly, it is good for people who don't want to reinstall their operating system every 5 years.
But it's a bad idea to punish software companies for security problems.
Open source products have less security problems but they generally have less money to spend on lawyers as well. I think that they would suffer more than Microsoft.
For the kid who DoSed yahoo and cnn a while back. They put him a government reform school for 8 months.
.doc files were not executable.)
.doc, .vbs, or .exe onto the network.
That is enough punishment for a silly prank.
And I can't simpathize with the people who blame the users for openning the attachments. Teaching users not to open emails that have "Hi" as the subject line is only a short term solution. Trying to get users to remember which types of files are executable is not an option either. (Until a year ago, I assumed that
A better solution is to not allow executable attachments which end in
An even better solution is for Microsoft to fix their programs or for people to not use Microsoft products.
There have been several versions of LDP. Some comply with DFSG but some don't.
A typical copyright might say something like this: "This document may only be distributed subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the LDP License." But the "LDP License" is linked to the LDP Manifesto which does not allow modification.
It's the versions that ban modification outright that are the problem.
DFSG has no problem with giving credit to authors.
>>But standard LAN fileshares (samba etc.) are fairly easy to use, which is something.
SMB has a very insecure user interface. Most people who share stuff with SMB do it by mistake.
Microsoft has a pretty good operating system with either XP and 2000. But now Linux is too big to go away.
Perhaps they could have turned 98 into a decent operating system in time but I doubt it.
The problem is a matter of user interface more than education. Microsoft products should not make it so easy to execute data.
As far as evolution goes, I would say that developers as well as users are at the caveman stage. It should be much easier to do ordinary things with computers.
Yesterday, a professor was me about setting up a web page. She wanted to do much of it herself because she wanted to do more advanced things then the school provided web pages did. She was talking about setting up a webserver and some can of a "chat board" where students could discuss things. The thing that makes this interesting is that she has no idea about anything to do with computers.
Somehow she got the idea that just because setting up a web server and a bbs should be easy to do that it actually was easy to do. Hah! In fact the average computer user has a better chance of getting struck by lighting than being able to set up a bbs on their own.
You brought up transferring files between computers. This really should be as simple as sending an email. But frankly it's not. I once took hours to set up an ftp server. ICQ is my current favorite so far as ease of use goes but even then there are problems with fire walls etc.
At school I often want to transfer files from my home computer. But unfortunately, I am behind a firewall at home so I can't do it directly. What I end up doing is, when I'm at home I ftp the files to a temporary ftp site. Then I ssh to the computer on campus where I want to put the files. (This computer doesn't have an ftp server). Then from that computer I ftp to the temporary ftp site and download my files.
What a horrible horrible mess! Also the ftp protocol is utter crap itself... It's insecure. It continually seems to get binary and text files confused so your data gets screwed up. It doesn't have let you continue a download if you started but got disconnected.
I really can't blame the users if they don't want to deal with computers any more than they have to.
>>If you can dream it up, its probably been done (within reason).
;) I've never heard anyone doing it anyways. And I'm just an undergrad.
I think that's far too optomistic view of where we are.
Right now, I would say that we are the caveman stage of using computers.
There's tons of stuff that I've thought of that I'll never have time to write... Right now I'm working on some software that I think is fairly unique and inovative. I'll tell you in a month what it is maybe...
If you look at things like napster. Everyone thought about writing it but only one person actually did.
PIRACY, n. Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.
Full disclosure is good but it's best to have a fix available before you disclose. Sometimes the fix is just to turn off Wu-FTP and switch to a different ftp server. But everyone tries to agree on a fix before they announce that a package is buggy.
If you have a Kernel security bug then you you mail it to Linus or Alan privately.
If you have an apache bug then there is a private list for that.
If you have a debian bug there is a private list for that.
I can't think of any major project that doesn't have a private list to discuss security.
Red Hat made a mistake when they made the security problem known before the agreed time. This isn't a matter or agreeing Red Hat or not. Red Hat admits that an employee released it by mistake and they appologised.
Mistakes happen. That's life...
So... Ballmer thinks that even if people were given the choice they would still install Microsoft software.
What is depressing is that he is probably right. Microsoft does have a monopoly on the desktop after all.
I think that Microsoft should just give the schools the money and let them do what ever they want with it. Buy desks or chairs. New basketball uniforms... What ever the schools wants.
It's ridiculous to pretend that giving a billion dollars worth of software to schools costs Microsoft anything. Probably it costs them 4 million dollars in packaging. But they can more than make that up from the advertising they get as a result... Microsoft has probably spent 500 million advertising XP and 2k already.
That isn't even a punishment. And they have been convicted, right?
I don't know how they got the figures. But Netcraft is traditionally very even handed and reasonable.
This new virus probably won't help those figures very much.
So remember... If you buy from a web site running IIS you have a 10% chance that your credit card number is going to be sent directly to a guy who calls himself Hax0rDo0d.
I don't want to flame MS for this since customers demand that no password be installed by default. But on the other hand theres no need to go over board and buy from hax0red web sites just to be nice.
I think they've ALL been extremely harmless up to this point. Sure there are still tons and tons of rooted boxes out there from Code Red. But that's not the worst thing that could happen.
I don't think most people realise the destructive power a million little pcs connected to the internet can have.
Forget about fifteen year olds DoSing Yahoo and CNN for a couple days. A million computers could easily take out all the phones in DC for a couple days. That would be expensive I think.
Or instead of just deleting a couple mp3 files the viruses could do harmfull things to the computers they infect. Stuff like destroying the monitor. Then destroying the Bios. Then erasing the hard drive. That's the kind of thing I'm afraid of.
Perhaps you don't remember the Red Hat Pirhana episode? In the Linux world software with a default password is considerred shocking and outrageous. Even if it's pre 1.0 like Pirhana was.
>>and a decent way to keep track of more than 10 open windows/programs.
:)
That's what I try to say. Right now I have 9 windows open and 8 windows minimized.
My solution is to use Enlightenment with the an ever so slightly modified Cyrus theme. The Cyrus theme is critical. It is the only one that I have found that behaves the way I want it to.
The Cyrus theme looks depressing as heck. People ask me if I'm gothic or something. I've been looking for different theme but this is the only one that behaves the correct way.
Also Enlightenment really needs to be configured propperly.
I have a tiny monitor too, so that makes it harder for me to handle a lot of open windows.
Carmack makes a good case for why this would be reasonable to do in certain cases.
ATI says that they optomise their driver for some other popular games. I would be interested to know which other games. I doubt they could list them all for pr reasons but it would be cool if they would just list 2 or 3 other games that they optomise for.
If you look at the growth of the kernel you'll see that the main parts have basically stayed the same size (in terms of lines of code) since 2.2.
:)
By the main parts I mean everything except drivers. The largest parts of this are the file system and network code. The file system grew a bit when Rieserfs was include into the kernel but it's a tiny increase compared to the rest of the code.
Drivers make up more than 75% of the Linux source code. And this driver code is growing rapidly.
People talk about the fact that you can cut things out of the Linux kernel if you don't want to use them. This is true. But it's even more true to say that if you did want to use everything in the Linux kernel you would have to buy a lot of hardware.
I don't know why you think I would care about other programmers. And I'm fairly confident I can get a job regardless. Probably those other programmers should get a different job if they can't keep up.