The only problem with OpenBSD in regards to 3rd party apps is that updates are only build against -current. So, if you run a release, you don't get any package updates, not even for security vulnerabilities. Only apps in the base install (like ssh and nginx) get updates. FreeBSD's ports tree, by contrast, is not separated by development branches, so you can always get the latest ports tree as long as the release is supported. The same tree that works for -current also works for the supported legacy release.
It seems that (judging from the picture) Theo keeps everything in one spot. I don't know how Debian and Gentoo distribute their build servers, but they spread it out among multiple developers and entities. Has Theo considered listing a university for help? I know OSU helps out with some Linux distributions.
I don't think what Theo proposes in his e-mail is going to garnish any sympathy from a business. A company isn't going to want to offload his costs onto their books with no strings attached.
Personally, I'd say they should cut down on some of the architectures that are supported. Some of the older ones (like VAX) aren't the most energy-efficient architectures nowadays. Running a few new x86 servers is going to be better for the electric bill than running a bunch of discontinued platforms. Bitrig is only focusing on x86 and ARM and that's allowing them to do things such as making clang the default compiler instead of having to stick with GCC 4.2.1 forever.
Red Hat doesn't include anything that could potentially infringe upon patents. The reason why fonts in Windows and OS X look good is because a lot of man-hours went into developing them, so companies like Microsoft got a patent for things like ClearType. That said, if you need better Linux fonts, look into Infinality.
I agree. I'm not sure why the top 50 comments are all complaining about it since it's already a requirement for most states that retailers have to collect sales tax. It seems the groups that are complaining about it are the companies who are out of compliance with the law and the internet libertarians who think that paying taxes is literally communism.
gNewSense depends on outdated Ubuntu repositores and as far as I know, isn't being developed anymore. If you want a "libre" distro, either run Debian with only the main repository enabled (the Debian kernel doesn't have the nonfree firmware files unless you add them) or run Trisquel.
Actually, there's a customized spin of CentOS called Stella Linux which is more desktop-focused. It has some external repos enabled for things like flash. I haven't tried it, but it looks interesting. http://li.nux.ro/stella/
Also, if you're a Linux user, you can use the OpenJDK packages as well if you don't want to use anything Oracle related. Minecraft runs fine with OpenJDK on my Slackware 14 setup.
You don't go to college to learn a trade. You go to college to learn the fundamentals and become a well-rounded individual. There's certainly an argument that college is overpriced, but it will certainly help you in the long run. As someone once said, an employer may not care that you have a degree, but they will care if you don't have one.
Plus, the web development field is rather saturated as everyone else thinks they can make web pages. If you want to be a freelancer, you'd better be a good salesman (or woman) too.
Personally, I think 6 months is way too short of a time to iron out bugs plus insert new features (and then fix those bugs). As we've seen with Ubuntu, the bugs don't get fixed until at least 1-3 months after release. Slackware, for instance, does yearly releases and that seems to work well for them. The openSuSE guys are also considering (although not officially) yearly releases after the QA problems they had with getting 12.2 ready.
Exactly. Until vacation time is put into law as a mandatory requirement, then people will come in when they're sick in order to ration the few days that they have off. Employers will only give the bare minimum that doesn't make them too unattractive to employees and most employers lump vacation time with sick time.
I can see what you're saying, but the problem with that comparison is that Red Hat does contribute back in other ways to the community. They're one of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel and they've also paid developers to create their own projects, such as with the nouveau driver. Meanwhile, Oracle seems to go in the opposite direction, such as the recent moves with MySQL. So, from an ethical perspective, Red Hat is a hell of a lot higher compared to Oracle or other companies.
Red Hat wouldn't need to start obfuscating their patches in the first place. You'd think with all the billions of dollars Oracle and its consultants mooches off of companies that they would at least be able to develop their own Linux distribution instead of relying on something else.
Unfortunately, any beefing up of labor regulations and vacation time would be decried as socialism, so the only thing you can do is find a company that has a good work-life balance. Those are rare however and anyone in IT will tell you it has been that way for some time.
Because that would require management to do their job instead of trying to justify their 6-figure salaries. Personally, I'd say the reason why labor is exploited for overtime is because of the exempt salary provision in the law. Remove the exempt portion of it so all employees are covered by the overtime rules and such. That way, if managers think you need to be there beyond 8 hours, they'll pay you for it. Right now, if management tells me that I need to "work until the job is done", they are free to do so without providing anything extra for it.
I'd agree from the perspective of a low-budget desktop machine (unless you need things to run quietly), but for a laptop it's a different story. A 10 watt TDP difference on a mobile processor can make the difference between a cool machine and one that overheats, depending on the design of it. The Ivy Bridge in my current laptop hardly gets warm ever under load, whereas the Core 2 Duo/X1650 combo in my previous one would overheat to the point of shutting down. Plus, the Intel chips offer a lot smoother Linux graphics experience.
I never quite understood the whole net neutrality bandwagon. It seems that whenever this issue appears, there are always hoards of people screaming about the end of the internet and how bad corporations are and how if we don't get the government to regulate something right away, then the world is going to explode. But then again, this is Slashdot after all.
Particularly one idea that lawmakers should focus on is the monopolies that are essentially granted to the cable companies for their service. It's hardly a free market system as most people seem to think.
Slashdot Mirror
You can search for them here: http://openports.se/
The only problem with OpenBSD in regards to 3rd party apps is that updates are only build against -current. So, if you run a release, you don't get any package updates, not even for security vulnerabilities. Only apps in the base install (like ssh and nginx) get updates. FreeBSD's ports tree, by contrast, is not separated by development branches, so you can always get the latest ports tree as long as the release is supported. The same tree that works for -current also works for the supported legacy release.
It seems that (judging from the picture) Theo keeps everything in one spot. I don't know how Debian and Gentoo distribute their build servers, but they spread it out among multiple developers and entities. Has Theo considered listing a university for help? I know OSU helps out with some Linux distributions.
I don't think what Theo proposes in his e-mail is going to garnish any sympathy from a business. A company isn't going to want to offload his costs onto their books with no strings attached.
Personally, I'd say they should cut down on some of the architectures that are supported. Some of the older ones (like VAX) aren't the most energy-efficient architectures nowadays. Running a few new x86 servers is going to be better for the electric bill than running a bunch of discontinued platforms. Bitrig is only focusing on x86 and ARM and that's allowing them to do things such as making clang the default compiler instead of having to stick with GCC 4.2.1 forever.
Where's the report spam button when you need it?
I've had the same thoughts as well. If it was incorporated into something like Folding@home, you could get "paid" for completing so many work units.
Must be an oracle database.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
Red Hat doesn't include anything that could potentially infringe upon patents. The reason why fonts in Windows and OS X look good is because a lot of man-hours went into developing them, so companies like Microsoft got a patent for things like ClearType. That said, if you need better Linux fonts, look into Infinality.
I agree. I'm not sure why the top 50 comments are all complaining about it since it's already a requirement for most states that retailers have to collect sales tax. It seems the groups that are complaining about it are the companies who are out of compliance with the law and the internet libertarians who think that paying taxes is literally communism.
Larry Ellison?
gNewSense depends on outdated Ubuntu repositores and as far as I know, isn't being developed anymore. If you want a "libre" distro, either run Debian with only the main repository enabled (the Debian kernel doesn't have the nonfree firmware files unless you add them) or run Trisquel.
Actually, there's a customized spin of CentOS called Stella Linux which is more desktop-focused. It has some external repos enabled for things like flash. I haven't tried it, but it looks interesting. http://li.nux.ro/stella/
Also, if you're a Linux user, you can use the OpenJDK packages as well if you don't want to use anything Oracle related. Minecraft runs fine with OpenJDK on my Slackware 14 setup.
See, everything works out fine.
You don't go to college to learn a trade. You go to college to learn the fundamentals and become a well-rounded individual. There's certainly an argument that college is overpriced, but it will certainly help you in the long run. As someone once said, an employer may not care that you have a degree, but they will care if you don't have one.
Plus, the web development field is rather saturated as everyone else thinks they can make web pages. If you want to be a freelancer, you'd better be a good salesman (or woman) too.
Personally, I think 6 months is way too short of a time to iron out bugs plus insert new features (and then fix those bugs). As we've seen with Ubuntu, the bugs don't get fixed until at least 1-3 months after release. Slackware, for instance, does yearly releases and that seems to work well for them. The openSuSE guys are also considering (although not officially) yearly releases after the QA problems they had with getting 12.2 ready.
Exactly. Until vacation time is put into law as a mandatory requirement, then people will come in when they're sick in order to ration the few days that they have off. Employers will only give the bare minimum that doesn't make them too unattractive to employees and most employers lump vacation time with sick time.
I can see what you're saying, but the problem with that comparison is that Red Hat does contribute back in other ways to the community. They're one of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel and they've also paid developers to create their own projects, such as with the nouveau driver. Meanwhile, Oracle seems to go in the opposite direction, such as the recent moves with MySQL. So, from an ethical perspective, Red Hat is a hell of a lot higher compared to Oracle or other companies.
Red Hat wouldn't need to start obfuscating their patches in the first place. You'd think with all the billions of dollars Oracle and its consultants mooches off of companies that they would at least be able to develop their own Linux distribution instead of relying on something else.
Unfortunately, any beefing up of labor regulations and vacation time would be decried as socialism, so the only thing you can do is find a company that has a good work-life balance. Those are rare however and anyone in IT will tell you it has been that way for some time.
Because that would require management to do their job instead of trying to justify their 6-figure salaries. Personally, I'd say the reason why labor is exploited for overtime is because of the exempt salary provision in the law. Remove the exempt portion of it so all employees are covered by the overtime rules and such. That way, if managers think you need to be there beyond 8 hours, they'll pay you for it. Right now, if management tells me that I need to "work until the job is done", they are free to do so without providing anything extra for it.
I'd agree from the perspective of a low-budget desktop machine (unless you need things to run quietly), but for a laptop it's a different story. A 10 watt TDP difference on a mobile processor can make the difference between a cool machine and one that overheats, depending on the design of it. The Ivy Bridge in my current laptop hardly gets warm ever under load, whereas the Core 2 Duo/X1650 combo in my previous one would overheat to the point of shutting down. Plus, the Intel chips offer a lot smoother Linux graphics experience.
Don't worry, I'm sure NetBSD support it.
You mean, companies will collude together in order to raise the price of goods in that market? I'm shocked, shocked I tell ya!
What mechanical operation requires 16 hours of prep?
Windows.
I never quite understood the whole net neutrality bandwagon. It seems that whenever this issue appears, there are always hoards of people screaming about the end of the internet and how bad corporations are and how if we don't get the government to regulate something right away, then the world is going to explode. But then again, this is Slashdot after all.
David Farber gives a good response on why we should be cautious of NN: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200606/msg00014.html
Particularly one idea that lawmakers should focus on is the monopolies that are essentially granted to the cable companies for their service. It's hardly a free market system as most people seem to think.