I have both KDE and gnome running here (KDE primary) and run KDE and gnome apps as I please. IMHO, KDE and gnome should both be installed by default on any desktop-oriented distro.
Basically, it would be too difficult to hold other companies to the standard of ethics that MS has attained.
Actually, I think that finding companies with MS's standard of ethics would be even more work than finding "good guy" companies. After buying Halliburton and ExxonMobil, what do they do with the rest of their investment money? White slavery startups?
the Gates Foundation apparently think that Bill Gates has decided to turn over a new leaf after 'retiring' from MS. He's just found a new place to be a bad guy. . . and pick up public acclaim while doing it.
Judging from the number of comments supporting him, it seems to have worked. At least for the hard-core MS fanboys, I doubt the rest of us really expected anything different.
Given the number of funds now specializing in socially responsible investing (Working Assets comes to mind), your stating that it's impossible just about puts you in tinfoil-hat land... like the people who deny the Holocaust and global warming.
If you're enough of a Bill Gates / MS fanboy to want to defend the Gates Foundation, come up with something better.
wants to spread the disinformation that "global warming" isn't for real... ExxonMobil. Everyone else siding with ExxonMobil is simply regurgitating their PR bullshit, either knowingly or because their ability to stay on payroll (including the PR outfits paying astroturfers) depends on it.
Even the rest of the oil industry has bugged out on ExxonMobil... the ones investing in alternative energy.
I was considering using it in a data collection application since the hardware seems to be well suited... but if Steve Jobs intends to keep it dumbed down to super-smartphone levels, why bother?
OTOH, remember what the original Mac was supposed to be? If the original Mac had stayed the GUI appliance he'd planned, there wouldn't be an Apple Corporation today. . . smart hardware h4xx0rs undid what Jobs had in mind and opened up the box.
So it's probably only a matter of time before somebody opens the box and turns iPhone into something far more useful than Jobs intended.
but there's been a system available for milling the copper off copper-clad to turn them into PCBs for at least a generation... but the last time I looked, it was a few K per system.
A talented hacker, or a small team, could design software, hardware, and test out of their own homes without expensive produciton costs.
I put together a team to do this a generation ago, using a BBS for collaboration and the first decent Mac schematic design package for software, though we were stuck with wirewrap for prototyping... but it makes a big difference even in wirewrap to have a machine-generated net list.
There are lots of companies that can take PCB artwork generated by various schematic design packages (usually Gerber format artwork) and will turn them into PCBs with an overnight turnaround if you're willing to pay for it. This is preferable because you can get them with solder masks. The price of schematic design packages have dropped quite a bit to... several in the sub-$100 range, and there are even free and/or Open Source Linux projects for this. (google is your friend)
It costs, but if your hourly rate is a positive number, one can consider them cheaper than wirewrap for any circuit of even moderate complexity.
I'd recommend for hobbyist-level projects that one accepts the size/weight penalties and use leaded through-hole components. . . otherwise, have fun and good luck dealing with soldering surface mount.
to use the swimming pool water to cool the entire house than to use it to cool individual computers, set up the air conditioning so it dumps its heat into a heat exchanger with pool water pumped through it.
Or even (assuming moderate climate) to use the pool as a heat sink/source for heating / cooling the house.
Since the holder of userID 196126 ("Animojo") is either a MS astroturfer or someone who's been hypnotized by MS talking points, he is incapable of contributing to constructive technical discussion and slashdot would not be losing anything of value if the editors were to edit his account by deleting it.
Perhaps with two of us asking the editors to get up and do something, perhaps we'll get what we ask for.
with (a fast processor and enough memory and swap), I doubt that anyone is going to notice the difference between VMware Server running Quickbooks in a Windows VM and Quickbooks on a native XP box. . . except that the Linux box will be stabler.
So far, the only thing I haven't been able to run on VMware Server is Quake 1.
I've been running desktop Linux on the machine I do business with it for years. I'm pretty happy about it, except if I happen to be trying to plug in a new peripheral. (at that point, I suddenly start wishing I was running OSX... but I usually get over it)
upgrading an old box rather than buying a new one is that one knows what parts one is putting into the box... like putting a $45 (on sale) PSU into the upgrade instead of the $10 PSU that might come with the new machine. Which is why I just put $360 in parts into my 1999 ATX box instead of buying new. (motherboard, DDR2, virtualization-ready Athlon 64, new PSU)
But this is a strategy for a tech-savvy individual, not an organization.
The backup strategy I use is a mirror drive in a mobile rack (UNPLUGGED when not in use) imaged originally via dd (plus playing games with LVM) and updated via rsync every other day, and a monthly archival DVD backup. I think this gives one a better chance of getting everything back quickly than separating the data and OS. My last bare metal restore took 15 minutes... I just pulled out the dead drive, put in the backup, then went to Maxtor to file an RMA on the dead drive.
mine gives me not only reduced maintenance, especially in the area of Windoze Internet Security, but an easy migration path to Linux, The complexity is in terms of setup, which presumably isn't going to be done by the end user. Though setup isn't that hard if you can get a good distro-specific how-to. Post-install setup is required to get the most out of it (i.e. if you want it to run like a bat out of hell), but I can't point you to the how-to yet because my techbuilder.com article isn't posted yet.
I can replace my Windows apps with Linux apps easily as Linux apps with equal-better performance appear. All I have to do is... stop using a Windoze app and start using the Linux app. Graphics is just about there. Actually, if I had time to sit down with Krita or Xara Xtreme, I'd probably find that it is ready for prime time, at least for paint-raster stuff. I'm waiting for Eudora to get rolled into Thunderbird.
You get to be locked into the MS upgrade treadmill. I've got a couple of years worth of not having to worry much about my hardware or base OS... I'm running W98SE on VMware Server, and am completely unmotivated about upgrading. As for upgrading Debian, I can do that automatically, including upgrade to the next version if I feel like it.
The question of "which apps run on guest/host" is a red herring, most office users only work with a handful of apps on a daily basis, though the number appears greater for Mac users. A person who can't keep track of where a handful of apps are probably isn't somebody you want in your workplace. As for "training"... by and large, GUI apps are GUI apps whether they're for Linux, Opera, or Mac. The only problem I ever had switching between, say, word processor apps on these platform were differences in the menus, and I'd probably have the same problem if I were doing version upgrades on the same word processor.
On a day to day basis, I strongly prefer Opera for Linux over Firefox.
As for memory/CPU use, I'm running 1G of DDR2, run VMware Server and a major app or two in Linux practically all the time. I haven't used the swap file since I upgraded to the current system, and unless I'm running a game in Windows, the only time I ever see the CPU go to 100% is when I'm booting VMware Server... typical is under 5% and I spend a lot of time running 1%.
Your description sounds more like paid astroturfer to me. Or perhaps even a bot.
Whether or not any particular entity should migrate to Linux depends on specific circumstances, at this time there is no one-size-fits-all answer and the credibility and honesty (and in some cases, sanity) of anyone who says there is, whether pushing a Windows or a Linux solution, should be questioned.
VMware Server. The ONLY apps I haven't gotten to run so far are Quake 1 and Redneck Rampage, and I think an hour or so of digging through program stuff will get Redneck Rampage running. MS Office, Eudora, graphics software run with NO problems. What I've got is a fast, stable, malware-resistant Windoze setup behind a Linux firewall. I could justify this combination even if I didn't run ANY Linux apps. But since most of my working apps are Linux, I'm rather happy with this setup.
WINE isn't even installed on this rev of my workstation setup. With real emulation, I see no reason to bother with a Windoze setup that may or may not work with any program I feel like installing. WINE was a pain in the ass that I have no reason to deal with.
Run a faster machine (I'm now on an Athlon 3500+) and do some post-install setup (install VMware Tools, install the e1000 Ethernet virtual driver to speed up guest-host intercommunication). If you're running SAMBA to interconnect the Windows install to files, experiment with send/receive buffer sizes. Defrag often (whether from inside Windoze or using the VMware management console depends on your setup. I'll have a how-to article up on techbuilder.com in a few weeks. I'll just say it's running fast enough that my "phase 2 upgrade plan", an X2 dual core Athlon and taking the memory from 1G to 2 or 3 are indefinite hold.
While even with this, I have yet to figure out how to make Quake 1 work on VMware Server, this shouldn't be a problem for a business installation.
As for LKM emulation... I have been unable to figure out whether or not it supports guest-host clipboard, anyone know?
Well-known vendors NOT on the list frequently buy chipsets from these vendors. . . I have a D-Link G122B2 USB wireless adaptor that works with the Ralink 2570 driver, SLED10 and Freespire with no setup. I think the G122C3 uses another Ralink driver, and the A model doesn't use a Ralink chip set.
This makes checking for Linux compatibility a lot more interesting.
With good backups (I use a rsync script for drive mirroring and a dar script for DVD archiving) the consequences of a hard drive failure generally mean 15 minutes taking the backup out of the mobile rack (unplugged and removed from the computer room when not in use) and put it in the drive slot and if the bad drive's in warranty, waiting for the replacement drive to come back and mirroring your main workstation (ex-backup) drive to it. . . loss a day or two's worth of files.
Note that I said DVD+R. . . I'd been using DVD -R for years (including a bare-metal restore) before I discovered that +R is more reliable.
The kind of manufactured goods required to build such a thing also cost less than they did 4 years ago.
The assumptions have also changed since the 1990s, for instance, open ponds are obsolete due to problems with species control and going to enclosures means one can better control bioreactor conditions. Researchers are claiming 10-20x increases in yield due in part to this. Bottom line: higher capital cost vs MUCH higher yield per acre.
It's also the only game in town, it's scalable to installations with yield sufficient to grow 400M gallons per day. We don't have enough farmland to grow our way out with bio-ethanol, even using switchgrass and marginal farmlands.
I don't have to waste hours of my time a week having to keep a Windows box crapware-free, my copy of Windoze is in a VMware Server cage, and I only run it continously because converting my 2G of Eudora mailboxes and folders to Evolution is more pain than I want to face.
Major apps take a lot less in the way of resource utilization than it does on a bloatware Windoze special. (VMware Server/Windoze + Opera for Linux with 20 open windows + a K3B DVD burn session in background = 7% CPU utilization) While dependency problems are fairly rare on Windoze, when they happen, good luck finding a copy of the library file you need on google. While with a Linux automated installer like apt-get, the program automatically searches for the dependencies and installs then in the right order. You prefer GUIs? There are generally at least a couple per major distro these days, and they work.
Multimedia? Find the install script for your distro, click the checkboxes, start it, and get lost for a couple of hours.
I believe that my level of convenience in using my desktop would drop if I moved to XP or Vista. . . and wouldn't change much if I moved to a Mac unless I wanted to install a new peripheral.
In general, anyone whose Linux desktop is less convenient than a Windows or even a Mac desktop hasn't figured out how to set it up correctly. If you're one of these people, spend some time learning how your setup works. Google is your friend.
The tradeoffs?
1. Much more difficult setup:
While in general, IF YOU HAVE A DECENT HOW-TO IN FRONT OF YOU, doing new things with a Linux box aren't much harder than on Windoze, though they tend to be a bit more tedious. Without that how-to, you've got at best, hours and sometimes days or weeks of research ahead, with the full confidence that most answers you find will be wrong for your setup.
2. Finding drivers.
The major multi-OS players who support Linux, i.e. IBM and HP should go to the major peripheral vendors and say "Support us or we'll tell ALL our customers that we don't support your hardware and that using it puts you in danger of voiding your warranty, even in Windoze."
3. You still need to have reasonably modern hardware to run a full-scale desktop. I'm running an AMD Athlon 3500+ with 1G of DDR2... this is the first Linux setup I've had where I'm really happy with the speed. Admittedly, I'm running a fully loaded KDE WM, but even though I think I'd use fewer resources with gnome 2, I really hate certain gnome apps... try the gnome screenshot utility vs the KDE equivalent... and see the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
I have both KDE and gnome running here (KDE primary) and run KDE and gnome apps as I please. IMHO, KDE and gnome should both be installed by default on any desktop-oriented distro.
just because one or more of the mods here is a MS fanboy doesn't mean that a post they don't like deserves a flamebait rating.
The biggest weakness of slashdot is anonymous moderation.
Actually, I think that finding companies with MS's standard of ethics would be even more work than finding "good guy" companies. After buying Halliburton and ExxonMobil, what do they do with the rest of their investment money? White slavery startups?
as funny.
the Gates Foundation apparently think that Bill Gates has decided to turn over a new leaf after 'retiring' from MS. He's just found a new place to be a bad guy. . . and pick up public acclaim while doing it.
Judging from the number of comments supporting him, it seems to have worked. At least for the hard-core MS fanboys, I doubt the rest of us really expected anything different.
Given the number of funds now specializing in socially responsible investing (Working Assets comes to mind), your stating that it's impossible just about puts you in tinfoil-hat land... like the people who deny the Holocaust and global warming.
If you're enough of a Bill Gates / MS fanboy to want to defend the Gates Foundation, come up with something better.
wants to spread the disinformation that "global warming" isn't for real... ExxonMobil. Everyone else siding with ExxonMobil is simply regurgitating their PR bullshit, either knowingly or because their ability to stay on payroll (including the PR outfits paying astroturfers) depends on it.
Even the rest of the oil industry has bugged out on ExxonMobil... the ones investing in alternative energy.
I was considering using it in a data collection application since the hardware seems to be well suited... but if Steve Jobs intends to keep it dumbed down to super-smartphone levels, why bother?
OTOH, remember what the original Mac was supposed to be? If the original Mac had stayed the GUI appliance he'd planned, there wouldn't be an Apple Corporation today. . . smart hardware h4xx0rs undid what Jobs had in mind and opened up the box.
So it's probably only a matter of time before somebody opens the box and turns iPhone into something far more useful than Jobs intended.
I put together a team to do this a generation ago, using a BBS for collaboration and the first decent Mac schematic design package for software, though we were stuck with wirewrap for prototyping... but it makes a big difference even in wirewrap to have a machine-generated net list.
There are lots of companies that can take PCB artwork generated by various schematic design packages (usually Gerber format artwork) and will turn them into PCBs with an overnight turnaround if you're willing to pay for it. This is preferable because you can get them with solder masks. The price of schematic design packages have dropped quite a bit to... several in the sub-$100 range, and there are even free and/or Open Source Linux projects for this. (google is your friend)
It costs, but if your hourly rate is a positive number, one can consider them cheaper than wirewrap for any circuit of even moderate complexity.
I'd recommend for hobbyist-level projects that one accepts the size/weight penalties and use leaded through-hole components. . . otherwise, have fun and good luck dealing with soldering surface mount.
tend to be based on preventing the next fatal accident. You can imagine what accident prompted the Claymore mine warning.
This Side Towards Enemy (on a Claymore mine)
to use the swimming pool water to cool the entire house than to use it to cool individual computers, set up the air conditioning so it dumps its heat into a heat exchanger with pool water pumped through it.
Or even (assuming moderate climate) to use the pool as a heat sink/source for heating / cooling the house.
Since the holder of userID 196126 ("Animojo") is either a MS astroturfer or someone who's been hypnotized by MS talking points, he is incapable of contributing to constructive technical discussion and slashdot would not be losing anything of value if the editors were to edit his account by deleting it.
Perhaps with two of us asking the editors to get up and do something, perhaps we'll get what we ask for.
Glad I could help.
while the subject is all I actually have to say, certain brain-dead software around here insists on text in the body of the post.
with (a fast processor and enough memory and swap), I doubt that anyone is going to notice the difference between VMware Server running Quickbooks in a Windows VM and Quickbooks on a native XP box. . . except that the Linux box will be stabler.
So far, the only thing I haven't been able to run on VMware Server is Quake 1.
I've been running desktop Linux on the machine I do business with it for years. I'm pretty happy about it, except if I happen to be trying to plug in a new peripheral. (at that point, I suddenly start wishing I was running OSX... but I usually get over it)
Post this crap as "Anonymous Coward" rather than have your potential customers know that you're a Micro$hill.
Assuming that your profession is technology rather than astroturfing, of course.
upgrading an old box rather than buying a new one is that one knows what parts one is putting into the box... like putting a $45 (on sale) PSU into the upgrade instead of the $10 PSU that might come with the new machine. Which is why I just put $360 in parts into my 1999 ATX box instead of buying new. (motherboard, DDR2, virtualization-ready Athlon 64, new PSU)
But this is a strategy for a tech-savvy individual, not an organization.
The backup strategy I use is a mirror drive in a mobile rack (UNPLUGGED when not in use) imaged originally via dd (plus playing games with LVM) and updated via rsync every other day, and a monthly archival DVD backup. I think this gives one a better chance of getting everything back quickly than separating the data and OS. My last bare metal restore took 15 minutes... I just pulled out the dead drive, put in the backup, then went to Maxtor to file an RMA on the dead drive.
mine gives me not only reduced maintenance, especially in the area of Windoze Internet Security, but an easy migration path to Linux, The complexity is in terms of setup, which presumably isn't going to be done by the end user. Though setup isn't that hard if you can get a good distro-specific how-to. Post-install setup is required to get the most out of it (i.e. if you want it to run like a bat out of hell), but I can't point you to the how-to yet because my techbuilder.com article isn't posted yet. I can replace my Windows apps with Linux apps easily as Linux apps with equal-better performance appear. All I have to do is ... stop using a Windoze app and start using the Linux app. Graphics is just about there. Actually, if I had time to sit down with Krita or Xara Xtreme, I'd probably find that it is ready for prime time, at least for paint-raster stuff. I'm waiting for Eudora to get rolled into Thunderbird.
... by and large, GUI apps are GUI apps whether they're for Linux, Opera, or Mac. The only problem I ever had switching between, say, word processor apps on these platform were differences in the menus, and I'd probably have the same problem if I were doing version upgrades on the same word processor.
You get to be locked into the MS upgrade treadmill. I've got a couple of years worth of not having to worry much about my hardware or base OS... I'm running W98SE on VMware Server, and am completely unmotivated about upgrading. As for upgrading Debian, I can do that automatically, including upgrade to the next version if I feel like it.
The question of "which apps run on guest/host" is a red herring, most office users only work with a handful of apps on a daily basis, though the number appears greater for Mac users. A person who can't keep track of where a handful of apps are probably isn't somebody you want in your workplace. As for "training"
On a day to day basis, I strongly prefer Opera for Linux over Firefox.
As for memory/CPU use, I'm running 1G of DDR2, run VMware Server and a major app or two in Linux practically all the time. I haven't used the swap file since I upgraded to the current system, and unless I'm running a game in Windows, the only time I ever see the CPU go to 100% is when I'm booting VMware Server... typical is under 5% and I spend a lot of time running 1%.
Your description sounds more like paid astroturfer to me. Or perhaps even a bot.
Whether or not any particular entity should migrate to Linux depends on specific circumstances, at this time there is no one-size-fits-all answer and the credibility and honesty (and in some cases, sanity) of anyone who says there is, whether pushing a Windows or a Linux solution, should be questioned.
VMware Server. The ONLY apps I haven't gotten to run so far are Quake 1 and Redneck Rampage, and I think an hour or so of digging through program stuff will get Redneck Rampage running. MS Office, Eudora, graphics software run with NO problems. What I've got is a fast, stable, malware-resistant Windoze setup behind a Linux firewall. I could justify this combination even if I didn't run ANY Linux apps. But since most of my working apps are Linux, I'm rather happy with this setup.
WINE isn't even installed on this rev of my workstation setup. With real emulation, I see no reason to bother with a Windoze setup that may or may not work with any program I feel like installing. WINE was a pain in the ass that I have no reason to deal with.
Run a faster machine (I'm now on an Athlon 3500+) and do some post-install setup (install VMware Tools, install the e1000 Ethernet virtual driver to speed up guest-host intercommunication). If you're running SAMBA to interconnect the Windows install to files, experiment with send/receive buffer sizes. Defrag often (whether from inside Windoze or using the VMware management console depends on your setup. I'll have a how-to article up on techbuilder.com in a few weeks. I'll just say it's running fast enough that my "phase 2 upgrade plan", an X2 dual core Athlon and taking the memory from 1G to 2 or 3 are indefinite hold.
While even with this, I have yet to figure out how to make Quake 1 work on VMware Server, this shouldn't be a problem for a business installation.
As for LKM emulation... I have been unable to figure out whether or not it supports guest-host clipboard, anyone know?
Well-known vendors NOT on the list frequently buy chipsets from these vendors. . . I have a D-Link G122B2 USB wireless adaptor that works with the Ralink 2570 driver, SLED10 and Freespire with no setup. I think the G122C3 uses another Ralink driver, and the A model doesn't use a Ralink chip set.
This makes checking for Linux compatibility a lot more interesting.
With good backups (I use a rsync script for drive mirroring and a dar script for DVD archiving) the consequences of a hard drive failure generally mean 15 minutes taking the backup out of the mobile rack (unplugged and removed from the computer room when not in use) and put it in the drive slot and if the bad drive's in warranty, waiting for the replacement drive to come back and mirroring your main workstation (ex-backup) drive to it. . . loss a day or two's worth of files.
Note that I said DVD+R. . . I'd been using DVD -R for years (including a bare-metal restore) before I discovered that +R is more reliable.
The kind of manufactured goods required to build such a thing also cost less than they did 4 years ago.
The assumptions have also changed since the 1990s, for instance, open ponds are obsolete due to problems with species control and going to enclosures means one can better control bioreactor conditions. Researchers are claiming 10-20x increases in yield due in part to this. Bottom line: higher capital cost vs MUCH higher yield per acre.
It's also the only game in town, it's scalable to installations with yield sufficient to grow 400M gallons per day. We don't have enough farmland to grow our way out with bio-ethanol, even using switchgrass and marginal farmlands.
It works better.
I don't have to waste hours of my time a week having to keep a Windows box crapware-free, my copy of Windoze is in a VMware Server cage, and I only run it continously because converting my 2G of Eudora mailboxes and folders to Evolution is more pain than I want to face.
Major apps take a lot less in the way of resource utilization than it does on a bloatware Windoze special. (VMware Server/Windoze + Opera for Linux with 20 open windows + a K3B DVD burn session in background = 7% CPU utilization) While dependency problems are fairly rare on Windoze, when they happen, good luck finding a copy of the library file you need on google. While with a Linux automated installer like apt-get, the program automatically searches for the dependencies and installs then in the right order. You prefer GUIs? There are generally at least a couple per major distro these days, and they work.
Multimedia? Find the install script for your distro, click the checkboxes, start it, and get lost for a couple of hours.
I believe that my level of convenience in using my desktop would drop if I moved to XP or Vista. . . and wouldn't change much if I moved to a Mac unless I wanted to install a new peripheral.
In general, anyone whose Linux desktop is less convenient than a Windows or even a Mac desktop hasn't figured out how to set it up correctly. If you're one of these people, spend some time learning how your setup works. Google is your friend.
The tradeoffs?
1. Much more difficult setup:
While in general, IF YOU HAVE A DECENT HOW-TO IN FRONT OF YOU, doing new things with a Linux box aren't much harder than on Windoze, though they tend to be a bit more tedious. Without that how-to, you've got at best, hours and sometimes days or weeks of research ahead, with the full confidence that most answers you find will be wrong for your setup.
2. Finding drivers.
The major multi-OS players who support Linux, i.e. IBM and HP should go to the major peripheral vendors and say "Support us or we'll tell ALL our customers that we don't support your hardware and that using it puts you in danger of voiding your warranty, even in Windoze."
3. You still need to have reasonably modern hardware to run a full-scale desktop. I'm running an AMD Athlon 3500+ with 1G of DDR2... this is the first Linux setup I've had where I'm really happy with the speed. Admittedly, I'm running a fully loaded KDE WM, but even though I think I'd use fewer resources with gnome 2, I really hate certain gnome apps... try the gnome screenshot utility vs the KDE equivalent... and see the difference.