Are we all forgetting about Moonlight? Silverlight actually has a supported fully open-source alternative. Flash does not-- the open source flash solutions are basically reverse engineered while Mooonlight has support and documentation from Microsoft-- while retaining no licensing snafus.
Basically, you're all letting your fanboy rage over Microsoft blind your sense to the point that you're pushing a fully proprietary non-oss solution (flash) over a fully open source solution. If this site simply keeps in mind that Moonlight support is the base level of silverlight support to shoot for, then they've got a completely open-source friendly solution that has decent development tools (silverlight has a beautiful C#.NET base that is far easier to work with than flash-- not to mention can be developed with free tools).
As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter how much better the development is made by tools, docs, and language, or how open source the project is... all that matters is Microsoft affiliation.
So slashdot isn't necessarily pro-linux, pro-oss, or pro-free software. It's just anti-microsoft. I mean, that's the major crux of slashdot- that is its entire focus. Isn't that a little... you know... sad?
Here's the final word: if Microsoft is beating the Adobe toolchain in a cost-benefit-analysis, then more people should volunteer on Moonlight-- the project is progressing well and should remain at a competitve level with mainline silverlight. It has way more of a chance than gnash or anything, that's for damn sure. If Adobe wants their customers back, they can open source flash. That's that. I could use less binary blobs in my system.
My point is that the EULA for the beta was little different from the eula for previous release products. The fact that the eula denies permissions to perform comparative tests is therefore inadmissable as a reason that the comparative tests results are somehow invalid. If the eula restrictions magically invalidate test results, no comparitive tests would ever be valid even on release products.
Oh, that's just extra gravy- the legal implication. The results aren't valid for an entirely different reason: it would be the same as me using the Ubuntu 9.04 beta, finding it has a show-stopper bug that prevented my system from booting, then publishing a "trade journal" article warning consumers that the next version of Ubuntu will not feature the ability to boot. Is what I am doing slander or simple stupidity?
You might say that that would be stupid and everyone would ignore me-- well that's precisely what I am doing to this article. Same situation, different players.
At first glance, I thought I saw an article referencing women's health... on Slashdot. First off, there are absolutely no women reading slashdot. Second off, At least half of slashdotters either do not or have not ever interacted with women, much less to the extent that the nature of the cervix is relevant to them. I might go so far as to say that no female has ever seen slashdot intentionally. Ever.
A primer:
"Study finds cure for cervical cancer" == irrelevant to slashdot "Women's health problems caused by Micro$oft" == a valid slashdot article
And I am not going to bother RTFA, the example they gave was too non-slashdotty. This isn't digg... we don't have girls here. QED.
I don't really think it's fair to rank this distro last because you're of the opinion that netbook remix looks like a toy.
I was only looking at "good" systems to run on an EeePC. I could have included a bunch of other distros and then Ubuntu would be *almost* at the top. The point is that Windows 7, default Xandros, and HP MIE have more features and commercial supported (aka popular) applications out of the box. Mandriva has the benefit of being officially supported on the EeePC- that's certainly worth something.
For instance, both Windows 7 and the Xandros installation come with all the codecs you'll need to screw with media in the modern world- a great feature. Also, with the UNR and its LPIA architecture, you can install third party i386 packages like Opera, but it confuses apt so it recommends the removal of its dependencies from then on out. And I can tell you from experience that running firefox on an EeePC 900a is a fool's errand. It's slow as molasses-- you really need something like Opera to get a smooth web experience. Sure I could repackage it as LPIA... but do I really want to? This is just one example of a non-LPIA application.
In order to get Ubuntu to the point where my EeePC would sleep and wake properly, I had to do some work. In fact, it was more work than removing aufs from my Xandros installation. Now that's just sad. Canonical just doesn't seem committed to supporting Asus hardware properly unless they receive a big fat contract and branding agreement from Asus like with HP and Dell. I will be thrilled to use it if they do.
I didn't bother going over EasyPeasy much because the Original Poster specifically said he didn't like the UNR interface (including Ubuntu-EEE), so it was a waste. I honestly just avoid it because I don't like amateur third party versions of what I see as an already somewhat amateur operating system experience. The least I can do is get something custom tailored and supported for what I am running-- by people who get paid to do that. I would hate to think what would happen if the people doing the Easy Peasy distribution lost interest while I grew dependent on it.
And this isn't. What's your point? Microsoft has admitted that Windows 7 is a beta right now by calling it "Windows 7 Beta 1" and giving it away for free. I would say that the mystery is solved... this is a beta so the article is irrelevant.
Headline and most of the article say it's Windows 7, with a lame disclaimer at the very end that it's a beta.
Agreed. It seems as though everyone has forgotten that we're running Windows 7 BETA 1. One of the Windows 7's design goals is complete driver compatibility with Vista- I imagine they will have that by the RTM. They damn near have it now. Add that to the fact that Windows 7 uses generally less resources and this article is basically total BS.
Who told them they could run that beta in a production environment anyway?
You're not really allowed to use the beta for benchmarking or publishing articles like this claiming that a future product will be limited based on the results from the preliminary beta. Not only is it a "dick move" but it's actually a violation of the EULA and slander.
Seriously, if this was a serious tech news site they could get in trouble for doing this. Like it or not, Windows 7 had a EULA with which you specifically agreed not to do this upon downloading and installing it.
Well, I've been fooling with a much smaller and lower-end Eee over the last week or so (the $200 900a), and I'm just brimming with nasty experiences to share.
First and foremost- if you are a fan of Windows and your Eee has a non-SSD HDD, you really need to be using Windows 7. They are still passing out serial numbers and the disk images themselves are easy to find on bittorrent sites. It's honestly fantastic. Everything you like about Vista is just better in Windows 7 and most of what you didn't like is gone- plus the performance, damn.
Second, let's talk linux: running Linux on the EeePC is a real Monkey's paw sort of experience. With every upside is a cruel and awful downside-- and such. For instance, you can run Ubuntu Netbook Remix which uses Intel's LPIA architecture instead of i386-- that's really cool because it does a lot of static scheduling (I believe) and SSE3 optimization that is really great for the Atom processor... but it's not going to support you hardware perfectly. It's an OEM product so no time has been devoted to working out issues with the Asus ACPI. Basically, you're supposed to be paying Canonical for a working branded experience like HP and Dell did... unless you feel like doing the work yourself.
Easy Peasy 1.0 has all the hardware support down, but once more you're going to be running Ubuntu Netbook Remix's interface. I mean, let's face it- The EeePC 1000 is not just a device, it's a full computer. You probably want to treat it like an actual system not a toy. UNR's interface is really attention deficit and designed for serial single-tasking. Besides, I like to stay away from custom spins and stay on the mainline to receive better support and more timely upgrades/security updates. I'd rather not my system's health be dependent on some random stranger's freetime.
Honestly, you need to look into Mandriva. It's a fantastic and very pretty home distribution with full official support for the EeePC. I would recommend keeping a tiny FreeDOS partition (or usb key) around for bios updates, which come pretty frequently and often work in concert with system updates on Mandriva. You really should try it-- it might be just what you're looking for if you want solid support and to avoid headaches. Furthermore, if you want to get really creative you can always set up a custom system with LXDE-- I can link to a guide if anyone asks.
Personally, I run Asus Xandros on my machine with unionfs disabled to conserve diskspace (I only have 4 gb!). It's a well adjusted distribution with full support for the ACPI and a great CPU frequency profile. Also, it comes with all the codecs you'll need and uses all mplayer by default (no gstreamer, no pulseaudio-- simple and practical). The only downside (on the 900a) is that the touchpad's tap functionality is just awful when using the elantech X driver. I am not sure if it would be the same case on a 1000. If you want the Xandros distribution, you can probably torrent it- it doesn't use CD keys or anything.
Alternatively, you could also try HP's MIE image (Mobile Internet Experience). It's pretty close to an Eee 1000, so just get the support tool from HP that's designed to make a "recovery image" for you and just "recover" your EeePC. That's a custom spin of UNR + software and codecs-- not a bad way to go.
So, in conclusion:
1. Windows 7 (as supported as Vista) 2. Xandros (if you have it) (fully supported) 3. Mandriva 2009.0 (Gnome) (fully supported) 4. HP MIE (possibly supported) 5. Ubuntu Netbook Remix (partially supported) 6. Easy Peasy 1.0 (fully supported but crappy)
I think this simply calls for a really long, over-promising and under-delivering open source driver project in the tradition of Nouveau or anything in DRI produced without commercial support. I look forward to a series of unstable and unusable "releases" which may someday, years from now, result in a shoddy but roughly functional driver.
Maybe some *prominent* linux developers should take some time out of their respective minor IT and sysadmin jobs to create and fully support their very first OpenGL 3.0 driver for this moderately unpopular architecture.
It'll be like a Little Rascals movie, but with more facial hair.
Bloat / non modular - even "server" versions of windows come with all kinds of crap that will never be used on a typical server, things like ie, outlook express, media player, directx etc... I want my servers to be absolutely minimal, and controlled entirely over a serial console... I don't want any unnecessary code installed or running because it introduces risk and increases patching burden.
It's interesting you bring this up, because this really reflects a linux mindset. The idea that your slinging tarballs around your system, patching and rebuilding every aspect for security reasons. That's Microsoft's problem-- you're a supported customer, after all. You are running an image of their supported configuration as opposed to a self-supported... hullaballoo.
While the 70s-80s unix designs on which linux is based are far from perfect, it does seem that windows has been far worse in many ways...
You then go on to describe a lot of userland features designed primarily for the ease of use of home users. Don't forget that I was commenting on Linux 1.x from 1995-- I don't even want to compare the userland of Windows 95 to Linux 1.x, because that's just so unfair. Even I believe it wouldn't be right to make that comparison. Don't forget that all these features can be disabled by an admin.
ActiveX - executable objects delivered by websites, an attempt to copy java applets, tho java was sandboxed while activex isnt.
ActiveX is a scripting layer, not unlike your perls and pythons in unix. I think it represents a sort of unholy bridge between web and Operating System that belongs in trusted networks like intranets but should really be disabled in an untrusted network setting, if not sandboxed. I believe in IE 7+ ActiveX is fully sandboxed. It's convenient if not a little too naive for a malicious network world.
Group policies - client side security, group policies are great for convenience but shouldn't be used as a security measure... Look at the policy which restricts access to cmd.exe, the check for this is implemented in the cmd.exe binary itself and easily overcome... Also the restriction thats supposed to stop you browsing to the c: drive, it only affects explorer and the file open dialogs, it doesnt affect the underlying apis so your cmd.exe can still go into that dir and view files, also if you do something like open a zipfile which gets put in a temporary subdir of c:, keep hitting the up button until you reach the root...
This is the "hacked from inside" scenario. I think instances like that are really meant to slow people down. From an NSA/military standpoint, physical access to any of these systems is game over security-wise. Linux is no safer than Windows in that respect. I've met people who can crack (linux or windows) password hashes on paper in mere minutes. Be afraid.
Bloat / non modular - even "server" versions of windows come with all kinds of crap that will never be used on a typical server, things like ie, outlook express, media player, directx etc... I want my servers to be absolutely minimal, and controlled entirely over a serial console... I don't want any unnecessary code installed or running because it introduces risk and increases patching burden.
Custom builds of windows are far more common in enterprise editions-- have you not seen custom Windows images within a corporation being shot around on Remote Deployment servers? I believe Windows is quite modular by design. The limitation to remove and alter that is purely artificial from a home user standpoint.
Encryption used for passwords, unix is modular in this respect, although older versions used DES it is easy to substitute in a new and stronger algorithm. Windows on the other hand used Lanman which is trivially weak, and removing it breaks compatibility with older systems due to the way the network authentication works. Newer versi
where then were all those security flaws you were talking about?
Well, as much as I'd like to read the bug reports on Linux 1.0, I can say that linux is and has always been riddled with privilege escalation exploits through userland system calls. I mean, we're talking about a poorly implemented and messy system that was maintained by amateurs in the mid 90's built on 1970's-80's design and security principles. I don't have the time or interest to even look into the usenet archives for specific cases of this, but I am confident nonetheless.
When a system isn't secure by design (Linux is secure in a very antiquated sense, we're talking modern secure) then you need a lot of professionals with alot of paid time to spackle up the security issues. Linux definitely didn't have that in the mid 90's. One might construe that it was insecure, but it's difficult to verify because the system was extremely untested from a security-standpoint. I don't believe you could even deign to consider linux secure on a commercial scale before SELinux in 2000; any suggestion to the contrary is pretty absurd.
For clarification, we are not talking about security in terms of "my kid sister downloaded comet cursor and now i have a virus"-- more on the lines of "do I want to put banking information on this server?"
Since modern windows and linux are both somewhat classic approaches to operating systems (linux moreso), I'd imagine that whomever has the bigger security team has the more secure product from an absolute standpoint in a dynamic and changing world of security threats. That would probably be Microsoft.
Would you like to point out those huge numbers of security flaws?
I think it enjoyed a great deal of apparent security back then, since nobody had anything sensitive or valuable on linux servers in 1995. If you were security conscious, you probably were using Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, VMS, or even NT. If you were security conscious and using free software, maybe you were using BSD. Linux was still wrestling with such difficult issues as having a working file system and supporting not super common hardware back then. Linux in 1995 was really hands-on: definitely not what you'd find in a professional environment.
..show them the numbers. Microsoft Windows' security flaws since 1995 vs that of Linux
That's absolutely retarded. Linux was a hobby project used by a handful of people in 1995. It basically was security flaws with a little bit of operating system in between. If you want to argue security, you really need to compare quite modern linux. Besides that, old dos-based windows are irrelevant. You have to compare with NT 5+ based systems. I mean, when were linux systems even common enough to produce relevant data like that? People used Unix where Linux is now in the 90's.
This is assuming that Windows 7 Starter edition is targeting the mainstream netbook markets, so that this will "drive up costs"-- which it isn't, really. Starter Edition is created with the hope that the Chinese might someday pay for software. Since that's probably not going to happen, it doesn't seem like a really serious intiative.
For most readers of slashdot, this version of windows will not be available for purchase, so it's really a non-issue. To pretend that all Windows pricing is somehow based on the Starter price but offering the ultimate features is a false premise. In reality, this is a system limited to basically offer an excuse to charge as little for it as possible. Their excuse to charge less is to offer less, and to charge more is to offer more- like any other product.
So let's look at what's really happening here:
Netbooks will Run Windows 7 Basic, probably-- maybe Home Premium on the higher end. That's it. End of story. Starter edition is not really on the table. Some sales guys are probably just selling it up without a full understanding of the strategy. They're mostly likely on targeting it for netbooks in third world countries, like OLPC-like initiatives.
As an avid slashdot reader, I would have expected their profits to triple as soon as they released a linux client, since SO MANY people use linux (and not windows), and it's so much easier to write supportable code on linux.
Instead, it seems almost as though supporting a linux installation is a tremendous waste of time because it's an inconsistent bitch to program for, everyone runs a different distribution that is somehow quirky or incompatible, and the community will literally attack your effort until it becomes so unmonetized that you are literally losing money to provide software.
It seems to me that they may have realized that wine makes it unnecessary to waste any cash on linux development, since it's a win-win. On the plus side, you get to develop the software in windows where you've got real development tools and libraries, since games are harder to write than perl scripts, and then you don't have to worry about getting support tickets from some moron running gentoo-- plus it's absolutely free to let "software advocates" put in all the crappy work porting your product through wine. If it breaks, it's Wine (or Transgaming)'s problem, not yours! Bonus!
Hell, look at what happened with JavaFX-- even Sun, developers of Solaris, can't yet get JavaFX running in opensolaris or linux because of how difficult it is to get that smooth graphical jazz running in X with all its assorted crapitude-- but they've already got it humming on Windows and Mac-- or Google, getting Chrome and Google Talk out the door on Windows first, and pushing out Google Earth for linux as a wine-based solution.
So the linux community is not large enough to support the money necessary to make the port, and then if you somehow do, they attack you for not open sourcing your code!-- just like what happened with Loki and Corel.
I would say CCP made an intelligent and well informed move with all factors taken into account. Unix has been around since the 70's, and somehow, it's never had a gaming market of any note. This has never ceased not to amaze me.
You aren't going to save any money moving everything in the university to a whole new platform-- especially not if they're using all new products like Vista and Exchange 2007. What a tremendous waste. Re-installing everything and retraining all the employees and rewriting documentation for students will be outrageously expensive. If your University were looking to change/upgrade from some old outdated system or start a whole new system somewhere (like a new building?), that would be a different story.
It sounds like your university is already outfitted with a working infrastructure. They'd have to be either insane or spend-happy to go along with a plan like that.
If you want to shift to a new system, you will need to slowly introduce it into the ecoysystem, like a few boxes in a computer lab at a time. A new server for a new department, etc.
The majority of web servers are linux systems running apache, so it stands to reason that they would also account for the majority of hacks...
Congratulations, you guys are the Microsoft Windows of the web. Hope they can keep that security where there mouth is, since they haven't been doing a terribly good job up until now. I estimate the attackers will get better faster than the OSS developers.
There are also more potential reviewers of open code...
This is a really dangerous way of thinking. This is making the assumption that people will actually peer review code out of the goodness of their hearts without being paid to do so. It's generally been found that reading code is more time consuming and excruciating work than writing code, so it's far more likely to happen only if and when people are paid to do so. I would guess that there are more security professionals at Microsoft than at Redhat, Novell, and Canonical combined. How many of the people that will review the code are qualified enough to spot major security issues within that? To trust an anonymous mass to solve all these problems is naive to the point of belligerent ignorance.
Consider that for years there were only 32,000 possible password hashes in every single debian based system, opening them to casual brute force attack. Where were the "many eyes" then? It took years before a single paid security personnel noticed it.
Since Open Source software has moved from being merely hobbyist, it is now a discount replacement for professional code. If you took the number of full time coding hours going into the linux platform, there's a chance it still wouldn't match the Windows platform considering how few companies work on it, how few personnel within those companies, and how distributed and design-by-committee the software is to the point of being technologically stagnant.
Open source software is uniquely qualified to implement trendy interfaces at breakneck speed, since it's basically powered by ADD, but to expect responsible and reasonable security review is the realm of well paid developers who have time and numbers. Consider that most open source and linux code in general is only written at a few very small companies on a software design mechanique from the 70's- it's not the sort of security I would trust.
You only need a few malicious contributors who are more adept than the hobby contributors running the major projects- and that is certainly not hard to find.
OSS on the other hand is written by the same people who use it.
You'd probably find more expert users and developers eating their own dogfood within Microsoft than the entire open source community. It's much smaller than people pretend it is.
It takes more than excited zeal to keep a system secure.
...he does raise the point that Microsoft will only issue fixes for certain customers.
Anyone can request a hotfix. Every copy of Windows purchased within the last decade is supported.
At least with open source you can patch problems on your own, even if the owner does not wish to or even goes out of business.
Did you know that that violates your support contract? If you should choose to do that, you've forfeited your rights to hold RedHat or Novell or whomever your vendor is liable in case of a major support issue-- they no longer have to hold your support contract valid. I don't think some amateur hacked solution is worth the loss of your vendor's liability.
Intel is going design their GPU... that's nice. I suppose they're aiming to find a way to waste more money and bomb harder than the PS3... if Sony can outdo themselves this time, they'll never have to make another console again!
Nothing to do with Apache, the Linux kernel, or anything else that gets included in a standard Enterprise distro, but merely the stuff the user/admin installs afterwards, and doesn't bother to harden appropriately.
Okay, it's less secure. I get it. I wrote that already, but in a less dismissive and excusing way. If the user needs to know all sorts of secret "in-the-know" unix crap to run a webserver that's secure, then small businesses and personal users should use Windows Server, which will probably be more secure out of the box, with graphical tools and wizards to help you configure it... since so many people aren't smart enough to use linux, it seems.
Yes, but it also makes it easier for those who use the software to locate and fix the flaws first;)
To give a better explanation of why OSS is more secure though, think about this scenario. You have a web server on the wide open internet serving an important web page for your business or institution and any downtime will lose you thousands, maybe millions of pounds of profit (think how much Amazon would lose if it's site goes down for example). If you run an open source web server and an exploit is uncovered by security researchers that allows an attacker to take over your web server then you can edit the source code to fix it immediately, or at least put a quick fix in place to block the attack and have very little, perhaps even no downtime.
If however you rely on a propriatary vendor, say Microsoft, to fix it and it takes them 2 weeks to release a patch, what do you do in the meantime? Do you keep your web server up and risk having your web server hijacked or do you take it down and lose millions in business?
This is just an example, you can mitigate the problem by having a firewall block attacks but this only works to a degree. I wasn't too sure about why OSS myself was more secure for a while, but it's one of those things that when you look into the reasoning behind such comments you'll see realise that yes, they're right, OSS really is fundamentally a more secure concept.
Of course, the other thing to realise is that binaries are themselves fairly trivial to interpret for people who have a strong computer science background such that it's not even particularly a massively difficult task to spot exploits in closed source software. It is however often much harder to fix faults in closed source software in the same way.
This entire argument falls apart if the closed source software has a fast response security team. With a centralized system like Windows, they might be able to distribute the fixed code faster and more completely. Enterprise customers can receive hotfixes for security issues in mere hours, despite the fact that the major patch needs to go through QA before getting sent out to the whole platform.
This argument is decimated if untrusted parties are involved anywhere in the software creation process for the OSS. Unintentional bugs and exploits are found all the time in the linux kernel... imagine what would happen if someone dropped in well hidden intentional malicious code?
Remember that the majority of successfully hacked webservers are linux systems running apache, so it's difficult to tell whether the systems are more dangerous due to malicious intent or the more commonplace incompetence that riddles free code in general.
It's a good thing it was a controlled demonstration. Usually you can tell it's KDE 4 when it throws a SIGSEGV and the system explodes when you try to shut down your computer or when systray icons get garbled because they're not KDE 4 apps.... or, you know, they realize that Kopete seems as though it were made to be sort of a "shock/torture/horror/saw"-like experience for User Experience designers-- like a snuff film, but with UI guidelines instead of a brazillian woman. Maybe they'd figure it was KDE when they realized that their desktop is actually not really a desktop folder but a layer for widgets... something far less useful and sensical than what you'd usually do with desktop space on windows or mac. Imagine if instead of a desktop, Vista just had that sidebar. Yikes.
This whole thing is basically meaningless because people just aren't that tech savvy. You show them something new and graphical- and KDE 4 based its look heavily on Vista, so they can say "Windows 7 looks like KDE"- but really, how are they to know you're lying to them. The desktop is meant to mimic Windows so what's the big surprise?
You really have to use both systems to realize that KDE 4 is so godawful that comparing it to Windows 7 is practically a sort of curse or vulgarity that should be punished by stoning.
What is it that the Haiku kernel does that the Linux kernel doesn't? And if there is something, why couldn't the Linux kernel be adapted to do that as well?
It's smaller and of a more sane design. It was designed by a professional kernel developer, not a ragtag group of amateurs. It doesn't have that mad-maxy feel that linux does. It's more streamlined and more adapted to the simple task of being a desktop kernel.
In Haiku, when I boot plug in a network cable, does the OS notice and automatically try to connect?
That's child's play. Few systems were as slow as linux in implementing those sorts of features. Even opensolaris has a smooth implementation of that.
Can I connect to an open wireless network in two clicks, the way I can on OS X or Ubuntu? Is my wireless card even supported?
I believe anything supported under freebsd will work- they do have a freebsd networking compatiblity layer. Since it's a pre-alpha, you may have to test it. However, you won't need anything as complicated as NetworkManager to get to that point if the card is supported. (i haven't tested wireless)
Except it doesn't provide similar functionality. From what you've told me, I can no longer play games, use wireless, or watch HD videos, despite that Be was supposed to be a multimedia operating system.
It's got full SDL support, so it should work fine. You can run Quake II or III in it, for instance. It also has a fairly modern build of VLC working in it-- so I don't know what would be stopping you.
If you want something like amarok or rhythmbox, it would be very quick to write the Be way, since it's very GUI centric.
Ew. This is one of the things I always hated about Windows Server -- no debugging over a serial console, and you need a video card in the machine, even if it's never used. No thanks.
That's not really what Haiku is for. It's a desktop system. You should not use it for any headless tasks. The point is that you won't have to debug the system through the serial because it won't be broken because it works and it's really only for being a desktop system.
However, I do believe that if there is a total failure Be in general drops into the serial with the kernel debugger.
And on a desktop, you've now set yourself up such that, if the video driver ever has a problem, you're hosed. I can at least boot to text-mode and try to fix the problem -- depending on how serious it is, I could try various configurations, launching an X server, killing it, launching it again...
You're trapped in the X mindset. I can't think of any other windowing systems that behave like that, Haiku's included.
WTF does "boots cleaner" mean?
You really need to try it.
I suppose I'll have to try Haiku before I can say this with confidence...
You'll have to try it before you say anything about it with confidence.
The amount of time and money spent spackling linux into a semi usable state for desktop users could probably have been put towards building several operating systems designed with desktop in mind. This lack of creativity and motivation from people is just sad- the linux ecosystem has always had an insurmountable usability ceiling that endless amounts of hacks and graphical glaze are barely eroding. It's quite impressive what the rather small Haiku OS team has done in this time- it won't be long before it quietly glides past Ubuntu in overall ease of use.
With a few more developers, I think Haiku has far more potential to beat Windows and Mac in desktop usability than linux does. If people can just break themselves of this
The kernel really isn't a great place to differentiate these. The kernel really should just be a giant device driver -- which is the point. Does Haiku support my wireless card? Can it provide accelerated OpenGL on nvidia hardware? Since Be was so good at video, once upon a time, how well does mplayer work on Haiku, especially with, say, hardware-accelerated h.264 playback?
It's a fledgling operating system getting ready to take flight- it needs developer attention. Haiku is not just a kernel, it's a whole operating system. The reason I like it is because it's a clean and refreshing approach. All of the things you mention in linux are rather hackish and feel overall awkward. Linux always feels sort of heavy when compared to systems like Mac or Be that just do exactly what they want to do. I think the point is that a redesigned approach might provide similar functionality with reduced resources because there are fewer unecessary layers of abstraction. Removing the networking aspect from the window manager and mode switching with the kernel is a simplification. The driver system is simplified-- it's not designed to run headlessly so it runs natively with a GUI. This is good stuff for a desktop. It boots faster, it boots cleaner, and its overall simpler for the end user. It is open source so it doesn't always need to act like Be, either. It can act however it needs to.
In theory- it's a better design and it needs attention. I don't think it needs to get pulled up into the psychotic unix legacy mess. Just give it a shot-- you can grab a vmware image and run it in a player. It's only 30 mb. You'll see what I am talking about. It's just plain simpler- but a good kind of simpler.
Slashdot Mirror
Are we all forgetting about Moonlight? Silverlight actually has a supported fully open-source alternative. Flash does not-- the open source flash solutions are basically reverse engineered while Mooonlight has support and documentation from Microsoft-- while retaining no licensing snafus.
Basically, you're all letting your fanboy rage over Microsoft blind your sense to the point that you're pushing a fully proprietary non-oss solution (flash) over a fully open source solution. If this site simply keeps in mind that Moonlight support is the base level of silverlight support to shoot for, then they've got a completely open-source friendly solution that has decent development tools (silverlight has a beautiful C# .NET base that is far easier to work with than flash-- not to mention can be developed with free tools).
As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter how much better the development is made by tools, docs, and language, or how open source the project is... all that matters is Microsoft affiliation.
So slashdot isn't necessarily pro-linux, pro-oss, or pro-free software. It's just anti-microsoft. I mean, that's the major crux of slashdot- that is its entire focus. Isn't that a little... you know... sad?
Here's the final word: if Microsoft is beating the Adobe toolchain in a cost-benefit-analysis, then more people should volunteer on Moonlight-- the project is progressing well and should remain at a competitve level with mainline silverlight. It has way more of a chance than gnash or anything, that's for damn sure. If Adobe wants their customers back, they can open source flash. That's that. I could use less binary blobs in my system.
There are plenty of females here, you troll
You must be new here... I find your response to my irrefutable scientific claim to be weak and without substance. No wonder you posted anonymous.
My point is that the EULA for the beta was little different from the eula for previous release products. The fact that the eula denies permissions to perform comparative tests is therefore inadmissable as a reason that the comparative tests results are somehow invalid. If the eula restrictions magically invalidate test results, no comparitive tests would ever be valid even on release products.
Oh, that's just extra gravy- the legal implication. The results aren't valid for an entirely different reason: it would be the same as me using the Ubuntu 9.04 beta, finding it has a show-stopper bug that prevented my system from booting, then publishing a "trade journal" article warning consumers that the next version of Ubuntu will not feature the ability to boot. Is what I am doing slander or simple stupidity?
You might say that that would be stupid and everyone would ignore me-- well that's precisely what I am doing to this article. Same situation, different players.
At first glance, I thought I saw an article referencing women's health... on Slashdot. First off, there are absolutely no women reading slashdot. Second off, At least half of slashdotters either do not or have not ever interacted with women, much less to the extent that the nature of the cervix is relevant to them. I might go so far as to say that no female has ever seen slashdot intentionally. Ever.
A primer:
"Study finds cure for cervical cancer" == irrelevant to slashdot
"Women's health problems caused by Micro$oft" == a valid slashdot article
And I am not going to bother RTFA, the example they gave was too non-slashdotty. This isn't digg... we don't have girls here. QED.
I don't really think it's fair to rank this distro last because you're of the opinion that netbook remix looks like a toy.
I was only looking at "good" systems to run on an EeePC. I could have included a bunch of other distros and then Ubuntu would be *almost* at the top. The point is that Windows 7, default Xandros, and HP MIE have more features and commercial supported (aka popular) applications out of the box. Mandriva has the benefit of being officially supported on the EeePC- that's certainly worth something.
For instance, both Windows 7 and the Xandros installation come with all the codecs you'll need to screw with media in the modern world- a great feature. Also, with the UNR and its LPIA architecture, you can install third party i386 packages like Opera, but it confuses apt so it recommends the removal of its dependencies from then on out. And I can tell you from experience that running firefox on an EeePC 900a is a fool's errand. It's slow as molasses-- you really need something like Opera to get a smooth web experience. Sure I could repackage it as LPIA... but do I really want to? This is just one example of a non-LPIA application.
In order to get Ubuntu to the point where my EeePC would sleep and wake properly, I had to do some work. In fact, it was more work than removing aufs from my Xandros installation. Now that's just sad. Canonical just doesn't seem committed to supporting Asus hardware properly unless they receive a big fat contract and branding agreement from Asus like with HP and Dell. I will be thrilled to use it if they do.
I didn't bother going over EasyPeasy much because the Original Poster specifically said he didn't like the UNR interface (including Ubuntu-EEE), so it was a waste. I honestly just avoid it because I don't like amateur third party versions of what I see as an already somewhat amateur operating system experience. The least I can do is get something custom tailored and supported for what I am running-- by people who get paid to do that. I would hate to think what would happen if the people doing the Easy Peasy distribution lost interest while I grew dependent on it.
These were final release products too, you know.
And this isn't. What's your point? Microsoft has admitted that Windows 7 is a beta right now by calling it "Windows 7 Beta 1" and giving it away for free. I would say that the mystery is solved... this is a beta so the article is irrelevant.
Headline and most of the article say it's Windows 7, with a lame disclaimer at the very end that it's a beta.
Agreed. It seems as though everyone has forgotten that we're running Windows 7 BETA 1. One of the Windows 7's design goals is complete driver compatibility with Vista- I imagine they will have that by the RTM. They damn near have it now. Add that to the fact that Windows 7 uses generally less resources and this article is basically total BS.
Who told them they could run that beta in a production environment anyway?
You're not really allowed to use the beta for benchmarking or publishing articles like this claiming that a future product will be limited based on the results from the preliminary beta. Not only is it a "dick move" but it's actually a violation of the EULA and slander.
Seriously, if this was a serious tech news site they could get in trouble for doing this. Like it or not, Windows 7 had a EULA with which you specifically agreed not to do this upon downloading and installing it.
Well, I've been fooling with a much smaller and lower-end Eee over the last week or so (the $200 900a), and I'm just brimming with nasty experiences to share.
First and foremost- if you are a fan of Windows and your Eee has a non-SSD HDD, you really need to be using Windows 7. They are still passing out serial numbers and the disk images themselves are easy to find on bittorrent sites. It's honestly fantastic. Everything you like about Vista is just better in Windows 7 and most of what you didn't like is gone- plus the performance, damn.
Second, let's talk linux: running Linux on the EeePC is a real Monkey's paw sort of experience. With every upside is a cruel and awful downside-- and such. For instance, you can run Ubuntu Netbook Remix which uses Intel's LPIA architecture instead of i386-- that's really cool because it does a lot of static scheduling (I believe) and SSE3 optimization that is really great for the Atom processor... but it's not going to support you hardware perfectly. It's an OEM product so no time has been devoted to working out issues with the Asus ACPI. Basically, you're supposed to be paying Canonical for a working branded experience like HP and Dell did... unless you feel like doing the work yourself.
Easy Peasy 1.0 has all the hardware support down, but once more you're going to be running Ubuntu Netbook Remix's interface. I mean, let's face it- The EeePC 1000 is not just a device, it's a full computer. You probably want to treat it like an actual system not a toy. UNR's interface is really attention deficit and designed for serial single-tasking. Besides, I like to stay away from custom spins and stay on the mainline to receive better support and more timely upgrades/security updates. I'd rather not my system's health be dependent on some random stranger's freetime.
Honestly, you need to look into Mandriva. It's a fantastic and very pretty home distribution with full official support for the EeePC. I would recommend keeping a tiny FreeDOS partition (or usb key) around for bios updates, which come pretty frequently and often work in concert with system updates on Mandriva. You really should try it-- it might be just what you're looking for if you want solid support and to avoid headaches. Furthermore, if you want to get really creative you can always set up a custom system with LXDE-- I can link to a guide if anyone asks.
Personally, I run Asus Xandros on my machine with unionfs disabled to conserve diskspace (I only have 4 gb!). It's a well adjusted distribution with full support for the ACPI and a great CPU frequency profile. Also, it comes with all the codecs you'll need and uses all mplayer by default (no gstreamer, no pulseaudio-- simple and practical). The only downside (on the 900a) is that the touchpad's tap functionality is just awful when using the elantech X driver. I am not sure if it would be the same case on a 1000. If you want the Xandros distribution, you can probably torrent it- it doesn't use CD keys or anything.
Alternatively, you could also try HP's MIE image (Mobile Internet Experience). It's pretty close to an Eee 1000, so just get the support tool from HP that's designed to make a "recovery image" for you and just "recover" your EeePC. That's a custom spin of UNR + software and codecs-- not a bad way to go.
So, in conclusion:
1. Windows 7 (as supported as Vista)
2. Xandros (if you have it) (fully supported)
3. Mandriva 2009.0 (Gnome) (fully supported)
4. HP MIE (possibly supported)
5. Ubuntu Netbook Remix (partially supported)
6. Easy Peasy 1.0 (fully supported but crappy)
And there ya go.
I think this simply calls for a really long, over-promising and under-delivering open source driver project in the tradition of Nouveau or anything in DRI produced without commercial support. I look forward to a series of unstable and unusable "releases" which may someday, years from now, result in a shoddy but roughly functional driver.
Maybe some *prominent* linux developers should take some time out of their respective minor IT and sysadmin jobs to create and fully support their very first OpenGL 3.0 driver for this moderately unpopular architecture.
It'll be like a Little Rascals movie, but with more facial hair.
Bloat / non modular - even "server" versions of windows come with all kinds of crap that will never be used on a typical server, things like ie, outlook express, media player, directx etc... I want my servers to be absolutely minimal, and controlled entirely over a serial console... I don't want any unnecessary code installed or running because it introduces risk and increases patching burden.
It's interesting you bring this up, because this really reflects a linux mindset. The idea that your slinging tarballs around your system, patching and rebuilding every aspect for security reasons. That's Microsoft's problem-- you're a supported customer, after all. You are running an image of their supported configuration as opposed to a self-supported... hullaballoo.
While the 70s-80s unix designs on which linux is based are far from perfect, it does seem that windows has been far worse in many ways...
You then go on to describe a lot of userland features designed primarily for the ease of use of home users. Don't forget that I was commenting on Linux 1.x from 1995-- I don't even want to compare the userland of Windows 95 to Linux 1.x, because that's just so unfair. Even I believe it wouldn't be right to make that comparison. Don't forget that all these features can be disabled by an admin.
ActiveX - executable objects delivered by websites, an attempt to copy java applets, tho java was sandboxed while activex isnt.
ActiveX is a scripting layer, not unlike your perls and pythons in unix. I think it represents a sort of unholy bridge between web and Operating System that belongs in trusted networks like intranets but should really be disabled in an untrusted network setting, if not sandboxed. I believe in IE 7+ ActiveX is fully sandboxed. It's convenient if not a little too naive for a malicious network world.
Group policies - client side security, group policies are great for convenience but shouldn't be used as a security measure... Look at the policy which restricts access to cmd.exe, the check for this is implemented in the cmd.exe binary itself and easily overcome... Also the restriction thats supposed to stop you browsing to the c: drive, it only affects explorer and the file open dialogs, it doesnt affect the underlying apis so your cmd.exe can still go into that dir and view files, also if you do something like open a zipfile which gets put in a temporary subdir of c:, keep hitting the up button until you reach the root...
This is the "hacked from inside" scenario. I think instances like that are really meant to slow people down. From an NSA/military standpoint, physical access to any of these systems is game over security-wise. Linux is no safer than Windows in that respect. I've met people who can crack (linux or windows) password hashes on paper in mere minutes. Be afraid.
Bloat / non modular - even "server" versions of windows come with all kinds of crap that will never be used on a typical server, things like ie, outlook express, media player, directx etc... I want my servers to be absolutely minimal, and controlled entirely over a serial console... I don't want any unnecessary code installed or running because it introduces risk and increases patching burden.
Custom builds of windows are far more common in enterprise editions-- have you not seen custom Windows images within a corporation being shot around on Remote Deployment servers? I believe Windows is quite modular by design. The limitation to remove and alter that is purely artificial from a home user standpoint.
Encryption used for passwords, unix is modular in this respect, although older versions used DES it is easy to substitute in a new and stronger algorithm. Windows on the other hand used Lanman which is trivially weak, and removing it breaks compatibility with older systems due to the way the network authentication works. Newer versi
where then were all those security flaws you were talking about?
Well, as much as I'd like to read the bug reports on Linux 1.0, I can say that linux is and has always been riddled with privilege escalation exploits through userland system calls. I mean, we're talking about a poorly implemented and messy system that was maintained by amateurs in the mid 90's built on 1970's-80's design and security principles. I don't have the time or interest to even look into the usenet archives for specific cases of this, but I am confident nonetheless.
When a system isn't secure by design (Linux is secure in a very antiquated sense, we're talking modern secure) then you need a lot of professionals with alot of paid time to spackle up the security issues. Linux definitely didn't have that in the mid 90's. One might construe that it was insecure, but it's difficult to verify because the system was extremely untested from a security-standpoint. I don't believe you could even deign to consider linux secure on a commercial scale before SELinux in 2000; any suggestion to the contrary is pretty absurd.
For clarification, we are not talking about security in terms of "my kid sister downloaded comet cursor and now i have a virus"-- more on the lines of "do I want to put banking information on this server?"
Since modern windows and linux are both somewhat classic approaches to operating systems (linux moreso), I'd imagine that whomever has the bigger security team has the more secure product from an absolute standpoint in a dynamic and changing world of security threats. That would probably be Microsoft.
Would you like to point out those huge numbers of security flaws?
I think it enjoyed a great deal of apparent security back then, since nobody had anything sensitive or valuable on linux servers in 1995. If you were security conscious, you probably were using Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX, VMS, or even NT. If you were security conscious and using free software, maybe you were using BSD. Linux was still wrestling with such difficult issues as having a working file system and supporting not super common hardware back then. Linux in 1995 was really hands-on: definitely not what you'd find in a professional environment.
..show them the numbers. Microsoft Windows' security flaws since 1995 vs that of Linux
That's absolutely retarded. Linux was a hobby project used by a handful of people in 1995. It basically was security flaws with a little bit of operating system in between. If you want to argue security, you really need to compare quite modern linux. Besides that, old dos-based windows are irrelevant. You have to compare with NT 5+ based systems. I mean, when were linux systems even common enough to produce relevant data like that? People used Unix where Linux is now in the 90's.
This is assuming that Windows 7 Starter edition is targeting the mainstream netbook markets, so that this will "drive up costs"-- which it isn't, really. Starter Edition is created with the hope that the Chinese might someday pay for software. Since that's probably not going to happen, it doesn't seem like a really serious intiative.
For most readers of slashdot, this version of windows will not be available for purchase, so it's really a non-issue. To pretend that all Windows pricing is somehow based on the Starter price but offering the ultimate features is a false premise. In reality, this is a system limited to basically offer an excuse to charge as little for it as possible. Their excuse to charge less is to offer less, and to charge more is to offer more- like any other product.
So let's look at what's really happening here:
Netbooks will Run Windows 7 Basic, probably-- maybe Home Premium on the higher end. That's it. End of story. Starter edition is not really on the table. Some sales guys are probably just selling it up without a full understanding of the strategy. They're mostly likely on targeting it for netbooks in third world countries, like OLPC-like initiatives.
As an avid slashdot reader, I would have expected their profits to triple as soon as they released a linux client, since SO MANY people use linux (and not windows), and it's so much easier to write supportable code on linux.
Instead, it seems almost as though supporting a linux installation is a tremendous waste of time because it's an inconsistent bitch to program for, everyone runs a different distribution that is somehow quirky or incompatible, and the community will literally attack your effort until it becomes so unmonetized that you are literally losing money to provide software.
It seems to me that they may have realized that wine makes it unnecessary to waste any cash on linux development, since it's a win-win. On the plus side, you get to develop the software in windows where you've got real development tools and libraries, since games are harder to write than perl scripts, and then you don't have to worry about getting support tickets from some moron running gentoo-- plus it's absolutely free to let "software advocates" put in all the crappy work porting your product through wine. If it breaks, it's Wine (or Transgaming)'s problem, not yours! Bonus!
Hell, look at what happened with JavaFX-- even Sun, developers of Solaris, can't yet get JavaFX running in opensolaris or linux because of how difficult it is to get that smooth graphical jazz running in X with all its assorted crapitude-- but they've already got it humming on Windows and Mac-- or Google, getting Chrome and Google Talk out the door on Windows first, and pushing out Google Earth for linux as a wine-based solution.
So the linux community is not large enough to support the money necessary to make the port, and then if you somehow do, they attack you for not open sourcing your code!-- just like what happened with Loki and Corel.
I would say CCP made an intelligent and well informed move with all factors taken into account. Unix has been around since the 70's, and somehow, it's never had a gaming market of any note. This has never ceased not to amaze me.
You aren't going to save any money moving everything in the university to a whole new platform-- especially not if they're using all new products like Vista and Exchange 2007. What a tremendous waste. Re-installing everything and retraining all the employees and rewriting documentation for students will be outrageously expensive. If your University were looking to change/upgrade from some old outdated system or start a whole new system somewhere (like a new building?), that would be a different story.
It sounds like your university is already outfitted with a working infrastructure. They'd have to be either insane or spend-happy to go along with a plan like that.
If you want to shift to a new system, you will need to slowly introduce it into the ecoysystem, like a few boxes in a computer lab at a time. A new server for a new department, etc.
The majority of web servers are linux systems running apache, so it stands to reason that they would also account for the majority of hacks...
Congratulations, you guys are the Microsoft Windows of the web. Hope they can keep that security where there mouth is, since they haven't been doing a terribly good job up until now. I estimate the attackers will get better faster than the OSS developers.
There are also more potential reviewers of open code...
This is a really dangerous way of thinking. This is making the assumption that people will actually peer review code out of the goodness of their hearts without being paid to do so. It's generally been found that reading code is more time consuming and excruciating work than writing code, so it's far more likely to happen only if and when people are paid to do so. I would guess that there are more security professionals at Microsoft than at Redhat, Novell, and Canonical combined. How many of the people that will review the code are qualified enough to spot major security issues within that? To trust an anonymous mass to solve all these problems is naive to the point of belligerent ignorance.
Consider that for years there were only 32,000 possible password hashes in every single debian based system, opening them to casual brute force attack. Where were the "many eyes" then? It took years before a single paid security personnel noticed it.
Since Open Source software has moved from being merely hobbyist, it is now a discount replacement for professional code. If you took the number of full time coding hours going into the linux platform, there's a chance it still wouldn't match the Windows platform considering how few companies work on it, how few personnel within those companies, and how distributed and design-by-committee the software is to the point of being technologically stagnant.
Open source software is uniquely qualified to implement trendy interfaces at breakneck speed, since it's basically powered by ADD, but to expect responsible and reasonable security review is the realm of well paid developers who have time and numbers. Consider that most open source and linux code in general is only written at a few very small companies on a software design mechanique from the 70's- it's not the sort of security I would trust.
You only need a few malicious contributors who are more adept than the hobby contributors running the major projects- and that is certainly not hard to find.
OSS on the other hand is written by the same people who use it.
You'd probably find more expert users and developers eating their own dogfood within Microsoft than the entire open source community. It's much smaller than people pretend it is.
It's difficult to remember something that isn't true.
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/managing-infosec/linux-hacked-more-often-than-windows-2003-23371
It takes more than excited zeal to keep a system secure.
...he does raise the point that Microsoft will only issue fixes for certain customers.
Anyone can request a hotfix. Every copy of Windows purchased within the last decade is supported.
At least with open source you can patch problems on your own, even if the owner does not wish to or even goes out of business.
Did you know that that violates your support contract? If you should choose to do that, you've forfeited your rights to hold RedHat or Novell or whomever your vendor is liable in case of a major support issue-- they no longer have to hold your support contract valid. I don't think some amateur hacked solution is worth the loss of your vendor's liability.
Intel is going design their GPU... that's nice. I suppose they're aiming to find a way to waste more money and bomb harder than the PS3... if Sony can outdo themselves this time, they'll never have to make another console again!
Besides the fact that this is vaporware, it simply sounds like a high-end RTOS running on a PC desktop... which isn't really a great place for it.
Call me conservative, but I am a bit skeptical about this.
Nothing to do with Apache, the Linux kernel, or anything else that gets included in a standard Enterprise distro, but merely the stuff the user/admin installs afterwards, and doesn't bother to harden appropriately.
Okay, it's less secure. I get it. I wrote that already, but in a less dismissive and excusing way. If the user needs to know all sorts of secret "in-the-know" unix crap to run a webserver that's secure, then small businesses and personal users should use Windows Server, which will probably be more secure out of the box, with graphical tools and wizards to help you configure it... since so many people aren't smart enough to use linux, it seems.
Yes, but it also makes it easier for those who use the software to locate and fix the flaws first ;)
To give a better explanation of why OSS is more secure though, think about this scenario. You have a web server on the wide open internet serving an important web page for your business or institution and any downtime will lose you thousands, maybe millions of pounds of profit (think how much Amazon would lose if it's site goes down for example). If you run an open source web server and an exploit is uncovered by security researchers that allows an attacker to take over your web server then you can edit the source code to fix it immediately, or at least put a quick fix in place to block the attack and have very little, perhaps even no downtime.
If however you rely on a propriatary vendor, say Microsoft, to fix it and it takes them 2 weeks to release a patch, what do you do in the meantime? Do you keep your web server up and risk having your web server hijacked or do you take it down and lose millions in business?
This is just an example, you can mitigate the problem by having a firewall block attacks but this only works to a degree. I wasn't too sure about why OSS myself was more secure for a while, but it's one of those things that when you look into the reasoning behind such comments you'll see realise that yes, they're right, OSS really is fundamentally a more secure concept.
Of course, the other thing to realise is that binaries are themselves fairly trivial to interpret for people who have a strong computer science background such that it's not even particularly a massively difficult task to spot exploits in closed source software. It is however often much harder to fix faults in closed source software in the same way.
This entire argument falls apart if the closed source software has a fast response security team. With a centralized system like Windows, they might be able to distribute the fixed code faster and more completely. Enterprise customers can receive hotfixes for security issues in mere hours, despite the fact that the major patch needs to go through QA before getting sent out to the whole platform.
This argument is decimated if untrusted parties are involved anywhere in the software creation process for the OSS. Unintentional bugs and exploits are found all the time in the linux kernel... imagine what would happen if someone dropped in well hidden intentional malicious code?
Remember that the majority of successfully hacked webservers are linux systems running apache, so it's difficult to tell whether the systems are more dangerous due to malicious intent or the more commonplace incompetence that riddles free code in general.
It's a good thing it was a controlled demonstration. Usually you can tell it's KDE 4 when it throws a SIGSEGV and the system explodes when you try to shut down your computer or when systray icons get garbled because they're not KDE 4 apps.... or, you know, they realize that Kopete seems as though it were made to be sort of a "shock/torture/horror/saw"-like experience for User Experience designers-- like a snuff film, but with UI guidelines instead of a brazillian woman. Maybe they'd figure it was KDE when they realized that their desktop is actually not really a desktop folder but a layer for widgets... something far less useful and sensical than what you'd usually do with desktop space on windows or mac. Imagine if instead of a desktop, Vista just had that sidebar. Yikes.
This whole thing is basically meaningless because people just aren't that tech savvy. You show them something new and graphical- and KDE 4 based its look heavily on Vista, so they can say "Windows 7 looks like KDE"- but really, how are they to know you're lying to them. The desktop is meant to mimic Windows so what's the big surprise?
You really have to use both systems to realize that KDE 4 is so godawful that comparing it to Windows 7 is practically a sort of curse or vulgarity that should be punished by stoning.
What is it that the Haiku kernel does that the Linux kernel doesn't? And if there is something, why couldn't the Linux kernel be adapted to do that as well?
It's smaller and of a more sane design. It was designed by a professional kernel developer, not a ragtag group of amateurs. It doesn't have that mad-maxy feel that linux does. It's more streamlined and more adapted to the simple task of being a desktop kernel.
It's based on this:
http://newos.org/
In Haiku, when I boot plug in a network cable, does the OS notice and automatically try to connect?
That's child's play. Few systems were as slow as linux in implementing those sorts of features. Even opensolaris has a smooth implementation of that.
Can I connect to an open wireless network in two clicks, the way I can on OS X or Ubuntu? Is my wireless card even supported?
I believe anything supported under freebsd will work- they do have a freebsd networking compatiblity layer. Since it's a pre-alpha, you may have to test it. However, you won't need anything as complicated as NetworkManager to get to that point if the card is supported. (i haven't tested wireless)
Except it doesn't provide similar functionality. From what you've told me, I can no longer play games, use wireless, or watch HD videos, despite that Be was supposed to be a multimedia operating system.
It's got full SDL support, so it should work fine. You can run Quake II or III in it, for instance. It also has a fairly modern build of VLC working in it-- so I don't know what would be stopping you.
If you want something like amarok or rhythmbox, it would be very quick to write the Be way, since it's very GUI centric.
Ew. This is one of the things I always hated about Windows Server -- no debugging over a serial console, and you need a video card in the machine, even if it's never used. No thanks.
That's not really what Haiku is for. It's a desktop system. You should not use it for any headless tasks. The point is that you won't have to debug the system through the serial because it won't be broken because it works and it's really only for being a desktop system.
However, I do believe that if there is a total failure Be in general drops into the serial with the kernel debugger.
And on a desktop, you've now set yourself up such that, if the video driver ever has a problem, you're hosed. I can at least boot to text-mode and try to fix the problem -- depending on how serious it is, I could try various configurations, launching an X server, killing it, launching it again...
You're trapped in the X mindset. I can't think of any other windowing systems that behave like that, Haiku's included.
WTF does "boots cleaner" mean?
You really need to try it.
I suppose I'll have to try Haiku before I can say this with confidence...
You'll have to try it before you say anything about it with confidence.
http://haiku-files.org/vm/haiku-pre-alpha-r29127-vm.zip
The amount of time and money spent spackling linux into a semi usable state for desktop users could probably have been put towards building several operating systems designed with desktop in mind. This lack of creativity and motivation from people is just sad- the linux ecosystem has always had an insurmountable usability ceiling that endless amounts of hacks and graphical glaze are barely eroding. It's quite impressive what the rather small Haiku OS team has done in this time- it won't be long before it quietly glides past Ubuntu in overall ease of use.
With a few more developers, I think Haiku has far more potential to beat Windows and Mac in desktop usability than linux does. If people can just break themselves of this
The kernel really isn't a great place to differentiate these. The kernel really should just be a giant device driver -- which is the point. Does Haiku support my wireless card? Can it provide accelerated OpenGL on nvidia hardware? Since Be was so good at video, once upon a time, how well does mplayer work on Haiku, especially with, say, hardware-accelerated h.264 playback?
It's a fledgling operating system getting ready to take flight- it needs developer attention. Haiku is not just a kernel, it's a whole operating system. The reason I like it is because it's a clean and refreshing approach. All of the things you mention in linux are rather hackish and feel overall awkward. Linux always feels sort of heavy when compared to systems like Mac or Be that just do exactly what they want to do. I think the point is that a redesigned approach might provide similar functionality with reduced resources because there are fewer unecessary layers of abstraction. Removing the networking aspect from the window manager and mode switching with the kernel is a simplification. The driver system is simplified-- it's not designed to run headlessly so it runs natively with a GUI. This is good stuff for a desktop. It boots faster, it boots cleaner, and its overall simpler for the end user. It is open source so it doesn't always need to act like Be, either. It can act however it needs to.
In theory- it's a better design and it needs attention. I don't think it needs to get pulled up into the psychotic unix legacy mess. Just give it a shot-- you can grab a vmware image and run it in a player. It's only 30 mb. You'll see what I am talking about. It's just plain simpler- but a good kind of simpler.