WinCE is a very reduced Win32 API (so we are not considering the huge collection of Win32 apps here) while GNU/Linux on ARM runs everything designed to be cross-platform.
The API isn't THAT much smaller, and a full API isn't needed on a compact device.
Even Windows Vista/7 had a massive API change from Windows XP that required adding proper "emulation" for XP mode. So are you trying to convince me that the "WinCE API isn't THAT smaller" than Windows Vista/7? Wait.. Are we still talking about the same WinCE where Windows Mobile is based on?
In case you haven't noticed, the devices that are owning the market right now are reduced versions of their desktop brothers. Doesn't seem that the majority of people prefer the full thing over the reduced version
Are you referring to the iPhone? That doesn't look like a netbook to me. Actually, on netbooks, people are using the "full thing" - Windows 7, Windows XP, OSX, GNU/Linux.. I never saw WinCE on a netbook.
Given a powerful ARM machine with plenty of RAM, you can literally compile all your GNU/Linux desktop software for ARM.
Because thats what makes a hardware/software package useful... that you can compile a bunch of desktop software for a device that isn't a desktop. Just recompiling an app isn't all there is to it, regardless of what you think. A desktop app running on a small device, even a netbook, starts to get shitty since the screen real estate isn't the same.
Ok, I think you got confused by my words. My point is that GNU/Linux is VERY powerful for netbooks due to the reasons I mentioned before. On netbooks you don't have a ultra-tiny screen that need different UIs. Gnome, XFCE, KDE fit just fine on netbooks, hence my point about the importance of being able to "just" compile all of this to ARM.
Then I talked about the fact that the reason above doesn't hold true for handheld devices (netbooks excluded) because they have different Human Interaction paradigms which current and extensive GNU/Linux software isn't prepared to address.
The fundamental problem here is that the people using Linux in their smaller offerings are using it because they are cheaping out. Its not Linux's fault, but its a side effect of being free. They are trying to piggy back on everyone elses work to increase their profit margin, which in general is fine.
Why is this a problem? Even if they don't contribute back, IMHO, they are increasing Linux popularity which in turn will grab more attention of other manufacturers which in turn will give us more Linux device drivers and support.
Half ass hacks or recompiles of full desktop applications aren't that good on tiny displays like a netbook or phone, yet thats what they keep trying to do.
If XFCE (or Gnome) doesn't fit in the screen of your netbook, then I doubt any browser will, without permanent scrolling and resizing operations (using fingers or not). And that, IMHO, will beat down the reason of using a "netbook" in the first place.
Most Linux based devices on the market are 'we put in as absolutely little investment of money and time into the product as possible and expect it to rule the world, even beating out other devices where have much more energy and thought put into them.
GNU/Linux was already a good product, it just needed some sane marketing:)
Do you think MS isn't already on this? They have WinCE which is slowly but surely focusing on ARM as the primary platform. (...) Linux doesn't have the same ability to say something and have it taken as gospel truth.
Put any WinCE handheld side to side to n900. The WinCE looks like a kids-play fisher-price laptop, it is a joke.
You can't just compare it with Linux like you did. Linux on ARM is exactly the same thing as Linux on anything else (x86_64, PowerPC,...), we are not talking about a crippled kernel here. You can't also compare the software available for ARM-Linux with WinCE software. WinCE is a very reduced Win32 API (so we are not considering the huge collection of Win32 apps here) while GNU/Linux on ARM runs everything designed to be cross-platform. Given a powerful ARM machine with plenty of RAM, you can literally compile all your GNU/Linux desktop software for ARM.
The fundamental problem here is not what is already available or supported for ARM-Linux but the fact that ARM devices are mostly associated with new Human Interface paradigms which current software can't answer. But this is changing fast with the increasing interest of the community and companies like Nokia pushing Maemo.
1) Yahoo scans for "Ubuntu|Linux" in the user-agent. 2) Ubuntu user's internet experience is "improved" by presenting Microsoft solutions first, in the search results. 3) ?? 4) Profit!
Yeah, because a site, that contains not a single argument, but only out-of-context quotes, and idiotic ideals, is just oh so cool. (..) Frankly, you both can fuck right off.
SELinux is an additional layer of *ACLs* to system resources and it is located in kernel layer. I can't put it better than that.
Just because SELinux is based on a formally verified architecture, it won't stop you for specifying wrong ACL rules which it seems to be the case here.
In a modern distro, it would be impossible for an individual to vet the entire code base, it would not be impossible for an organized, determined group of a few thousand experts to do so. I believe that the NSA does just this with selinux, or at least thats the claim.
Indeed, SELinux is based on the FLASK kernel architecture which is formally verified. This means that flask has a mathematical model (specification) which researchers use to test for bugs and check for correctness. They CANNOT guarantee that the whole architecture is free of bugs, however they totally guarantee that for all the tests and validations performed the architecture is 100% free of bugs. If the software (in this case a kernel) is developed exactly following the formal specification, then we can guarantee that the software will behave like the tested specification (mathematical model).
I'm not from formal methods but I believe it is something like that.
I've tried hard for two years to like Linux (I installed Ubuntu on two computers during that time and used it reasonably frequently), and it just never happened.
(1) Good thing to hear that but why did you try so hard to like GNU/Linux?.. Exactly!
But the absolute worst part of all of this is how Linux users often say that people should switch over to their OS because it's free, there aren't any viruses, and everything works just fine.
They aren't just Linux users. Every user happy with X thing will tell everybody else how good X thing is. Last time you went to a very good restaurant, didn't you told your friends about it?
I've got news for all of you: we like our OSes because they're simple and functional, with no headaches involved.
I'm lost now.. Why did you then try to like GNU/Linux so hard (1) ? I'm not criticizing and I agree it is good to experiment alternatives. But when someone tries to desperately try (it seems to be your cause, sorry if isn't) the alternatives, then I think it means something.
Maybe if the Linux community started caring when things didn't work, their OS might actually have a shot at competing with the other two.
I think this last comment doesn't make sense. If you have the time, just reflect a little about this: - Who is the "Linux community"? - Who are you trying to blame? - What is the purpose of Linux "competing with other two"?
That's right. The GNU/Linux community is not just Canonical, the community is mostly people like you and me that are willing to give back to the community (mostly their time) in exchange of a better desktop, fun and knowledge. In fact, if you first try to install GNU/Linux then you are part of the community and it is also your job to contribute. Things don't fix automatically. So lets read your comment again:
Maybe if the Linux community started caring when things didn't work, their OS might actually have a shot at competing with the other two.
That's right, you are also part of the community. So, it is also your OS and it is also your fault...
About competition.. GNU/Linux doesn't need to compete with anything, we only have to make it fit our needs. Because the day it stops fitting community's needs, GNU/Linux will die...
And this is how to terminate a possible promising career in electronics. Seriously, the kid will never be the same. He either won't touch on electronics anymore OR next time the project won't just look like a bomb.
Having viruses and other types of malicious software running on the computer is so common that people don't care anymore. Seriously.. I see people working in the middle of a "adware popups up window, user closes it" kind of game and they don't even seem to bother. When is this going to change???
Used it a lot on my desktop when I hacked some scanner drivers to support my parallel port scanner. It is amazing the light show that a "simple" null pointer deference in your kernel driver can make. : )
Also use it a lot to force buffers to flush to the disk and then remount the root filesystem as readonly. This was very useful to prevent disk corruption while I was debugging my ACPI suspend function on the laptop. For some reason (Microsoft ASL compiler) when the laptop was resuming from suspend state, the laptop LCD didn't turn on.
I also noticed that some laptops have SYSRQ as a function (fn key). That way one has to press: fn+sysrq+ however, things start to be funny when these laptop also have a numeric keyboard available as second function in the {u, i, o, j, k, l, m} keys. For example: fn+i gives key 5.
Now imagine fn+sysrq+u , one wanted a sysrq with command 'u' (remount root as ro I think), but will get a sysrq with command 5 (change log level I think). Yikes!
Just to point out that VirtualBox has support for 2D and 3D acceleration. I used to play "armadillo" there and (by also using AMD-V virtualization extension) it works great.
I also saw some friends using it to develop flash games using Adobe Flash CS3 and it was really smooth.
One major difference is that malware on Windows can screw up the entire system where Linux will most likely only screw up one profile.
I don't know why you were modded TROLL. In any decent GNU/Linux distro, elevated privileges are separated from the common user account. So yeah, unless you always run as root or use su/sudo blindly, I don't see how you can get your local system easily compromised without some serious exploitation. Even by exploiting a non-public attack vector it is fairly difficult to target a lot of Linux desktop machines due to the diversity of platforms and architectures out there.
Should we all be scared because of this? Is the world going to end? NO, but if you executed everything people throw at you, you should really start thinking in doing it wisely.
Still, most of free WiFi hotspots block every f**king port except 80 and 443. I didn't check but if Google is answering DNS queries on 80 and 443 then it is a good thing:)
Too bad that I can't use the Google DNS service on places that I would definitively use it. Those places are coffe's free WiFi hotspots, store free hotspots etc.. Usually, on those places the domain resolving is very slow (either done by their crappy router or forwarded to their crappy ISP). The problem is that most of them block all outgoing UDP traffic which invalidates the use of non-local DNS servers.
* After four months:
- Maximum battery capacity lowered to less than half.
tells me that you leave your battery constantly plugged into the laptop,
I do. But if the battery is damaged because of this, isn't the battery controller's fault? My Acer Aspire laptop managed to preserve the battery just fine over four years.
even when fully charged. Your battery has heat damage. Batteries don't like heat over 110F, why can't people remember this simple little thing?
Of course it doesn't help HP has the battery right next to the hottest spot in the damned system. Most other manufacturers keep the battery FAR away from the CPU/GPU area for that exact reason.
Exactly! The battery is just side by side with the CPU. So lets continue to blame HP for this one.
My two year HP pavillion dv6535ep laptop exibited the following behaviour during time:
* After two months:
- A lcd pixel near the bottom right corner stoped working, it is red all the time.
* After four months:
- Maximum battery capacity lowered to less than half.
* After a year and couple of months:
- The integrated (USB) camera stopped working due to bad contact on wiring near screen hinge. The camera starts/stops working everytime the screen is tilted.
* After two years:
- The power supply adapter stopped working (it shorts the mains when it gets too hot).
My previous laptop was a Acer Aspire 1520: * The battery capacity didn't go below ~80% after four years. * The nvidia graphics card failed after one year and something. * The power supply adapter failed with a lot of white smoke after two years and something. * A SMD transistor popped up from mainboard after five years. After soldering it myself, the laptop continued working perfectly until today.
And yes, I'm carefull with laptops, I take proper measures to preserve battery life and my house's electrical mains are not faulty.
Slashdot Mirror
dito
Does it provide Linux centric queries?
WinCE is a very reduced Win32 API (so we are not considering the huge collection of Win32 apps here) while GNU/Linux on ARM runs everything designed to be cross-platform.
The API isn't THAT much smaller, and a full API isn't needed on a compact device.
Even Windows Vista/7 had a massive API change from Windows XP that required adding proper "emulation" for XP mode. So are you trying to convince me that the "WinCE API isn't THAT smaller" than Windows Vista/7? Wait.. Are we still talking about the same WinCE where Windows Mobile is based on?
In case you haven't noticed, the devices that are owning the market right now are reduced versions of their desktop brothers. Doesn't seem that the majority of people prefer the full thing over the reduced version
Are you referring to the iPhone? That doesn't look like a netbook to me. Actually, on netbooks, people are using the "full thing" - Windows 7, Windows XP, OSX, GNU/Linux.. I never saw WinCE on a netbook.
Given a powerful ARM machine with plenty of RAM, you can literally compile all your GNU/Linux desktop software for ARM.
Because thats what makes a hardware/software package useful ... that you can compile a bunch of desktop software for a device that isn't a desktop. Just recompiling an app isn't all there is to it, regardless of what you think. A desktop app running on a small device, even a netbook, starts to get shitty since the screen real estate isn't the same.
Ok, I think you got confused by my words. My point is that GNU/Linux is VERY powerful for netbooks due to the reasons I mentioned before. On netbooks you don't have a ultra-tiny screen that need different UIs. Gnome, XFCE, KDE fit just fine on netbooks, hence my point about the importance of being able to "just" compile all of this to ARM.
Then I talked about the fact that the reason above doesn't hold true for handheld devices (netbooks excluded) because they have different Human Interaction paradigms which current and extensive GNU/Linux software isn't prepared to address.
The fundamental problem here is that the people using Linux in their smaller offerings are using it because they are cheaping out. Its not Linux's fault, but its a side effect of being free. They are trying to piggy back on everyone elses work to increase their profit margin, which in general is fine.
Why is this a problem? Even if they don't contribute back, IMHO, they are increasing Linux popularity which in turn will grab more attention of other manufacturers which in turn will give us more Linux device drivers and support.
Half ass hacks or recompiles of full desktop applications aren't that good on tiny displays like a netbook or phone, yet thats what they keep trying to do.
If XFCE (or Gnome) doesn't fit in the screen of your netbook, then I doubt any browser will, without permanent scrolling and resizing operations (using fingers or not). And that, IMHO, will beat down the reason of using a "netbook" in the first place.
Most Linux based devices on the market are 'we put in as absolutely little investment of money and time into the product as possible and expect it to rule the world, even beating out other devices where have much more energy and thought put into them.
GNU/Linux was already a good product, it just needed some sane marketing :)
Do you think MS isn't already on this? They have WinCE which is slowly but surely focusing on ARM as the primary platform.
(...)
Linux doesn't have the same ability to say something and have it taken as gospel truth.
Put any WinCE handheld side to side to n900. The WinCE looks like a kids-play fisher-price laptop, it is a joke.
You can't just compare it with Linux like you did. Linux on ARM is exactly the same thing as Linux on anything else (x86_64, PowerPC, ...), we are not talking about a crippled kernel here.
You can't also compare the software available for ARM-Linux with WinCE software. WinCE is a very reduced Win32 API (so we are not considering the huge collection of Win32 apps here) while GNU/Linux on ARM runs everything designed to be cross-platform. Given a powerful ARM machine with plenty of RAM, you can literally compile all your GNU/Linux desktop software for ARM.
The fundamental problem here is not what is already available or supported for ARM-Linux but the fact that ARM devices are mostly associated with new Human Interface paradigms which current software can't answer. But this is changing fast with the increasing interest of the community and companies like Nokia pushing Maemo.
any other suggestions of equally good linux flavors that don't have mono or the firefox move here?
Can't answer the "equally good flavor" for you but, try Gentoo Linux. Just add "-mono" to your global USE flags and you won't be bothered.
1) Yahoo scans for "Ubuntu|Linux" in the user-agent.
2) Ubuntu user's internet experience is "improved" by presenting Microsoft solutions first, in the search results.
3) ??
4) Profit!
However that doesn't prevent me of finding that website *extremely* funny.
Me, too. Their lack of understanding of HTML is hilarious.
I bet they riced it for IE.
Yeah, because a site, that contains not a single argument, but only out-of-context quotes, and idiotic ideals, is just oh so cool.
(..)
Frankly, you both can fuck right off.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a *official Gentoo Developer*. You can check it here:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/roll-call/userinfo.xml
However that doesn't prevent me of finding that website *extremely* funny.
Jesus Christ, can't people laugh anymore?
It's a meta-distribution for ricers, you insensitive clod!
Must see: http://funroll-loops.info/
What can possibly go wrong?? /. memo
So why didn't it stop this 8 yr old exploit?
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=682
SELinux is an additional layer of *ACLs* to system resources and it is located in kernel layer. I can't put it better than that.
Just because SELinux is based on a formally verified architecture, it won't stop you for specifying wrong ACL rules which it seems to be the case here.
--
Even Bing would have found the answer for you!
In a modern distro, it would be impossible for an individual to vet the entire code base, it would not be impossible for an organized, determined group of a few thousand experts to do so. I believe that the NSA does just this with selinux, or at least thats the claim.
http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/index.shtml
http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/fluke/html/flask.html
Indeed, SELinux is based on the FLASK kernel architecture which is formally verified. This means that flask has a mathematical model (specification) which researchers use to test for bugs and check for correctness. They CANNOT guarantee that the whole architecture is free of bugs, however they totally guarantee that for all the tests and validations performed the architecture is 100% free of bugs.
If the software (in this case a kernel) is developed exactly following the formal specification, then we can guarantee that the software will behave like the tested specification (mathematical model).
I'm not from formal methods but I believe it is something like that.
I've tried hard for two years to like Linux (I installed Ubuntu on two computers during that time and used it reasonably frequently), and it just never happened.
(1) Good thing to hear that but why did you try so hard to like GNU/Linux? .. Exactly!
But the absolute worst part of all of this is how Linux users often say that people should switch over to their OS because it's free, there aren't any viruses, and everything works just fine.
They aren't just Linux users. Every user happy with X thing will tell everybody else how good X thing is. Last time you went to a very good restaurant, didn't you told your friends about it?
I've got news for all of you: we like our OSes because they're simple and functional, with no headaches involved.
I'm lost now.. Why did you then try to like GNU/Linux so hard (1) ? I'm not criticizing and I agree it is good to experiment alternatives. But when someone tries to desperately try (it seems to be your cause, sorry if isn't) the alternatives, then I think it means something.
Maybe if the Linux community started caring when things didn't work, their OS might actually have a shot at competing with the other two.
I think this last comment doesn't make sense. If you have the time, just reflect a little about this:
- Who is the "Linux community"?
- Who are you trying to blame?
- What is the purpose of Linux "competing with other two"?
That's right. The GNU/Linux community is not just Canonical, the community is mostly people like you and me that are willing to give back to the community (mostly their time) in exchange of a better desktop, fun and knowledge. In fact, if you first try to install GNU/Linux then you are part of the community and it is also your job to contribute. Things don't fix automatically.
So lets read your comment again:
Maybe if the Linux community started caring when things didn't work, their OS might actually have a shot at competing with the other two.
That's right, you are also part of the community. So, it is also your OS and it is also your fault...
About competition.. GNU/Linux doesn't need to compete with anything, we only have to make it fit our needs. Because the day it stops fitting community's needs, GNU/Linux will die...
And this is how to terminate a possible promising career in electronics. Seriously, the kid will never be the same. He either won't touch on electronics anymore OR next time the project won't just look like a bomb.
Having viruses and other types of malicious software running on the computer is so common that people don't care anymore. Seriously.. I see people working in the middle of a "adware popups up window, user closes it" kind of game and they don't even seem to bother. When is this going to change???
Used it a lot on my desktop when I hacked some scanner drivers to support my parallel port scanner. It is amazing the light show that a "simple" null pointer deference in your kernel driver can make. : )
Also use it a lot to force buffers to flush to the disk and then remount the root filesystem as readonly. This was very useful to prevent disk corruption while I was debugging my ACPI suspend function on the laptop. For some reason (Microsoft ASL compiler) when the laptop was resuming from suspend state, the laptop LCD didn't turn on.
I also noticed that some laptops have SYSRQ as a function (fn key). That way one has to press:
fn+sysrq+ however, things start to be funny when these laptop also have a numeric keyboard available as second function in the {u, i, o, j, k, l, m} keys.
For example: fn+i gives key 5.
Now imagine fn+sysrq+u , one wanted a sysrq with command 'u' (remount root as ro I think), but will get a sysrq with command 5 (change log level I think). Yikes!
Just to point out that VirtualBox has support for 2D and 3D acceleration. I used to play "armadillo" there and (by also using AMD-V virtualization extension) it works great.
I also saw some friends using it to develop flash games using Adobe Flash CS3 and it was really smooth.
I don't want to imagine what would happen if the mobile phone in question was windows mobile based!!
Now I must hide quickly because I can hear the astroturfers running already..
Disclaimer: I own a mobile phone based on windows mobile 6.1.
One major difference is that malware on Windows can screw up the entire system where Linux will most likely only screw up one profile.
I don't know why you were modded TROLL. In any decent GNU/Linux distro, elevated privileges are separated from the common user account. So yeah, unless you always run as root or use su/sudo blindly, I don't see how you can get your local system easily compromised without some serious exploitation. Even by exploiting a non-public attack vector it is fairly difficult to target a lot of Linux desktop machines due to the diversity of platforms and architectures out there.
Should we all be scared because of this? Is the world going to end? NO, but if you executed everything people throw at you, you should really start thinking in doing it wisely.
Good catch, I thought DNS only used TCP for zone transfers and similar.
TCP DNS query with dig:
dig +tcp @8.8.8.8 www.slashdot.org
Linux /etc/resolv.conf seems not to be able to do DNS queries over TCP. However, *BSD can:
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=resolv.conf&sektion=5
=== cut /etc/resolv.conf ===
nameserver 8.8.8.8
options tcp
Still, most of free WiFi hotspots block every f**king port except 80 and 443. I didn't check but if Google is answering DNS queries on 80 and 443 then it is a good thing :)
Too bad that I can't use the Google DNS service on places that I would definitively use it. Those places are coffe's free WiFi hotspots, store free hotspots etc.. Usually, on those places the domain resolving is very slow (either done by their crappy router or forwarded to their crappy ISP). The problem is that most of them block all outgoing UDP traffic which invalidates the use of non-local DNS servers.
I removed an expired copy of Kaspersky AV from a Vista laptop yesterday, did a wndows-update and installed free AVG. On rebooting it black-screened.
in that instance another forced reboot brought the system back as normal - I have no explanation
You could have pressed ctrl+alt+f1, login and read ~/.xsession-errors to see what happened. Oh ... wait!
Well, that's all well and good but...
* After four months:
- Maximum battery capacity lowered to less than half.
tells me that you leave your battery constantly plugged into the laptop,
I do. But if the battery is damaged because of this, isn't the battery controller's fault?
My Acer Aspire laptop managed to preserve the battery just fine over four years.
even when fully charged. Your battery has heat damage. Batteries don't like heat over 110F, why can't people remember this simple little thing?
Of course it doesn't help HP has the battery right next to the hottest spot in the damned system. Most other manufacturers keep the battery FAR away from the CPU/GPU area for that exact reason.
Exactly! The battery is just side by side with the CPU. So lets continue to blame HP for this one.
My two year HP pavillion dv6535ep laptop exibited the following behaviour during time:
* After two months:
- A lcd pixel near the bottom right corner stoped working, it is red all the time.
* After four months:
- Maximum battery capacity lowered to less than half.
* After a year and couple of months:
- The integrated (USB) camera stopped working due to bad contact on wiring near screen hinge. The camera starts/stops working everytime the screen is tilted.
* After two years:
- The power supply adapter stopped working (it shorts the mains when it gets too hot).
My previous laptop was a Acer Aspire 1520:
* The battery capacity didn't go below ~80% after four years.
* The nvidia graphics card failed after one year and something.
* The power supply adapter failed with a lot of white smoke after two years and something.
* A SMD transistor popped up from mainboard after five years. After soldering it myself, the laptop continued working perfectly until today.
And yes, I'm carefull with laptops, I take proper measures to preserve battery life and my house's electrical mains are not faulty.
Seems to me that some computer desktops are starting to be a corporate warzone.
In other words: *All your desktop are belong to us*