My understanding is that OS/X runs MacOS applications much the same way A/UX did. (That's the "Blue Box", I think.) But that has more to do with hooks built into the MacOS than the Unix side of things.
A/UX was a System V port to Apple's 68K hardware, so it's definately not the same as NextStep/OSX --
One of the percieved advantages of Windows over the Unix world, from the standpoint of MIS directors, is that there is only two flavors (and they both run the almost the same set of applications).
Corporate buyers would probably stick with authentic Microsoft Windows, and you'd only see the generic versions on cheap clones.
(Case in point - long ago I worked at a place that bought lots of IBM brand PCs. They formatted IBM DOS off the hard drive and installed MS DOS, even thought they're basically the same thing, except the MS EMM386 was broken on IBM hardware. But they did it anyways, because other applications weren't "supported" on non-MS DOS.)
Isn't the standards movement entirely about commercial software? You don't configure and make Oracle or WordPerfect.
Without standards, the fear is you'd start to see commercial vendors releasing "tested and supported on RedHat 5.2 or greater only" statements, just because it's the only baseline they can aim for. It would be better if that read "supported on LSB 1.1 or greater", or whatever. Call it braindead, but that's how commercial sofware works.
(One idea that Linux should steal from the MacOS is something like the "desktop database", which allows you move programs around the directory structure and have them still run. It's the one huge reason the MacOS is more unbreakable (from a regular user perpsective) than either Windows or unix.)
You're right that the MCSE certification is not that hard, but implying it's automatic for non-morons is overstating things a bit.
The tests are primarly a test of your study skills, and how much you've studied (using practice tests and "brain dumps") - the reason is because the tests do not test your general knowledge of technology, not even general knowlege of MS technology. Instead, they highlight the bizarre NT "features" that Microsoft want highlight for marketing reasons.
For example, "WINS", one of the most basic elements of an NT network is barely mentioned, while there are question after question about "multi-link PPP with (proprietary) encryption and call-back" and "roaming user profiles".
(Considering that you aren't going to get very far admining NT without knowing at least the IPCONFIG command, implying that NT admin is all pointy-clicky is just plain false.)
So, you aren't going to get very far in an MCSE program without decent study and test taking skills, but that doesn't mean it's automatic for non-morons.
(Sometimes late at night, way up on the UHF dial, a community college broadcasts MCSE classes. It is pretty funny watching these people who can't figure out the "Printer Wizard", yet still want to be computer technicians. Fortunately the industry is brutal enough that these people will be disabused pretty quickly.) --
Apparently phantom menace is more of the same special edtion stuff - a bunch of squishy looking computer generated aliens that make cute noises. Oh well, I guess when the target audience is 10 year old kids...
Nothing could be worse than that blue muppet thing that played piano in return of the jedi. --
I think one problem with Stalin's and Mao's political agendas versus Stallman's is that Stalin's and Mao's included killing millions of people. Stalin and Mao had absolute power, Stallman gave up what ever power he might have had by giving away his code. The only thing he's got is a soapbox.
The guy has a right to spout off, and you folks have the right to comment, but calling him "off his rocker", "a crackpot", and so on, is, in my opinion, really out of bounds unless you personally know the man. Unless you think it would be fair to read slashdot a couple months from now and see things like "Rombuu is really a kook because he equated Stallman with Stalin."
I myself am sick of reading "IBM has embraced Open Source" just becuase a few AIX configurations ship with Apache. Does anyone actually think that IBM would sell that configation to someone who would buy Lotus Domino instead? Other than a HTML page about "Linux at IBM" and the Jikes thing, IBM hasn't done nothing for open source.
MacOS/X also ships with Apache, by the way.
So at this point, Apple has done more for "open source" than IBM, and what have they gotten for it? Venom.
(PS Apple's hiring a Linux Technology Manager - https://private.apple.com/cgi-bin/Tango.cgi/hr/web _wizard/queries/wizard_external_pagesNEW.qry?function=DetailScreen&REQUISITION_uid1=100396 3&TITLE_uid1=Technology%20Manager%2DLinu x)
When the video-driver-in-the-kernal thing gets dredged up, I always wonder if it really matters.
Servers generally run really generic SVGA or S3 drivers, which don't crash on NT 4, and from a normal user perspective, if your video driver crashes, you pretty much hosed anyway. (Unless the normal users you know like a command prompt.)
Linux doesn't have video drivers in the kernal pretty much only because Unix has never done it that way and Linus doesn't want it. But video on Unix has always been an afterthought, whereas on a client OS like Windows, it's practically the most important thing.
The thing Linux has, that Windows doesn't is compartmentalization. Sure you can run Linux on your 4 meg 386, just disable everything you don't need including X. Microsoft always designs their product around absurdly low standards for marketing reasons (486SX/25 with 16 MB is minimum spec for Windows NT), yet has to make everything kinda-sorta-run. That's why you don't see things like network-transparency with the Windows GUI - it would price them out of the unrealistically low-end market.
Well, I think Linus has the valid concern of keeping Linux the same on all architectures.
If you started to see home made platform-specific kernals, I can imagine the situation where that might become standard enough that people would submit patches just for the platform-specific kernal, and not the Linus kernal. This effectively forks the code, especially if RedHat or someone picks up on the patches.
I don't see any irony in the fact that a non-commercial OS gets ported to obscure platforms (cough, Amiga, cough), where a commercial OS that has a revenue stream does not.
Microsoft had a MIPS and PowerPC port. Haven't seen many Non-SGI MIPS or Non-Mac/Non-AIX PowerPC boxes lately have you? They only could push their thumb in Intel's eye for so long before they did the logical thing. --
Here's what Microsoft does - they march into the MIS Manager's office and offer a year or two of reduced or free software licences. They also fly him to redmond to see some sales presentations and possibly play some golf. All he has to do is pull the plug on Novell or Sun or whatever they got.
So he does it. Conversion costs skyrocket past predicitions, but with some fancy number crunching he shows the CIO and the President how he reduced support costs by 25% by switching to Windows NT. Then he's out of there to something better. After a year or two, Microsoft comes back with the bill, and annual licence and support cost is just as high or higher than Novell's or Sun's.
(By the way, Redhat could easily play this same game against Microsoft.) --
I recall a study from a while back that indicated the real cost of supporting a computer on a big company network was something like $20-30,000 per year. That included software, hardware, wiring, servers, training, and support.
The biggest chunk (~50%) was support costs. I'm sure if you further break down support costs, you'd find the biggest chunk is labor.
While you can make a good argument that the crappyness of DOS/Windows is a big reason those support costs are as high as they are, I'd bet that the numbers don't look much different in an all NT shop (where the users don't even have Admin rights to screw up their machines).
The point is, from a company standpoint, the Windows licence is a drop in the bucket. Meanwhile, these companies are having trouble hiring techs that can correctly install MS Office, and Unix administrators can bill for $100/hour easily in the Bay Area.
You folks can certainly make a good argument that Linux actually reduces desktop support costs, but I won't believe it until the support talent starts getting much cheaper.
"{GNOME and KDE} may make the desktop more "integrated," but they do slow the system down."
Most of my home computer's CPU time is burned up waiting for me to decide what to click or to remember a particular command sequence. A functional GUI may slow the "computer" down, but it makes the human faster.
Yes, we certainly are. Precisely what 'free software' or 'open source' means is what our community is founded upon.
First, I don't think Apple claimed that OS/X was Free in either the Beer or the Speech sense.
Second, can't you have one definition of "Linux has open source code" and Mr. Mac Developer over there have can have a different definition of "Darwin has open source code." If he's happy, does it really concern you?
(Also, do you have a link handy for the Alan Cox article? Thx.) --
LDAP is a generalized protocol which allows you to 'look up' user names and attributes. NDS is a hellva lot more than a protocol. I believe an NDS server will talk LDAP if you want it to.
My understanding is there still is a few problems with LDAP as an authentication scheme. --
Someone says "Open Source", and the GNU, Debian, and all of the various advocacy splinter groups people immedately think "We represent Open Source, they must be talking about us! But they didn't get our buy-in! Quick - publish a manifesto!"
Meanwhile the Linux and BSD user base hears "Open Source" and they think "Open Source - they must be competeing against Linux/BSD! Flame On!"
The truth of the matter is that Apple isn't advertising or trying to reach out to any of these people. (GNU/Debian/OSI/PSI/Linux/BSD people just do not make up a significant portion of Apple's customer base.) They're reaching out to their traditional base of Mac hackers and Mac software/hardware companies to try to make their new OS as popular and supported as possible.
Right now, the MacOS is such a shifting morass of interfaces that it seems that any particular piece of hardware or software has a good chance of breaking as soon as you throw an OS upgrade or a new Mac model at it. Having a stable and open foundation to solve this problem is a huge benifit to Mac users. It's really a non-issue to you if you are into Linux/BSD/Hurd or whatever. --
I've got a old box here connecting via Samba using the Microsoft LanMan DOS client. Works great - supports IP and domain authentication although it's harder to set up than the Novell DOS client.
I don't know if any one has a better solution -- I guess there must be a NFS client for DOS, but that probably costs money. --
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding is that OS/X runs MacOS applications much the same way A/UX did. (That's the "Blue Box", I think.) But that has more to do with hooks built into the MacOS than the Unix side of things.
A/UX was a System V port to Apple's 68K hardware, so it's definately not the same as NextStep/OSX
--
One of the percieved advantages of Windows over the Unix world, from the standpoint of MIS directors, is that there is only two flavors (and they both run the almost the same set of applications).
Corporate buyers would probably stick with authentic Microsoft Windows, and you'd only see the generic versions on cheap clones.
(Case in point - long ago I worked at a place that bought lots of IBM brand PCs. They formatted IBM DOS off the hard drive and installed MS DOS, even thought they're basically the same thing, except the MS EMM386 was broken on IBM hardware. But they did it anyways, because other applications weren't "supported" on non-MS DOS.)
--
Isn't the standards movement entirely about commercial software? You don't configure and make Oracle or WordPerfect.
Without standards, the fear is you'd start to see commercial vendors releasing "tested and supported on RedHat 5.2 or greater only" statements, just because it's the only baseline they can aim for. It would be better if that read "supported on LSB 1.1 or greater", or whatever. Call it braindead, but that's how commercial sofware works.
(One idea that Linux should steal from the MacOS is something like the "desktop database", which allows you move programs around the directory structure and have them still run. It's the one huge reason the MacOS is more unbreakable (from a regular user perpsective) than either Windows or unix.)
--
You're right that the MCSE certification is not that hard, but implying it's automatic for non-morons is overstating things a bit.
The tests are primarly a test of your study skills, and how much you've studied (using practice tests and "brain dumps") - the reason is because the tests do not test your general knowledge of technology, not even general knowlege of MS technology. Instead, they highlight the bizarre NT "features" that Microsoft want highlight for marketing reasons.
For example, "WINS", one of the most basic elements of an NT network is barely mentioned, while there are question after question about "multi-link PPP with (proprietary) encryption and call-back" and "roaming user profiles".
(Considering that you aren't going to get very far admining NT without knowing at least the IPCONFIG command, implying that NT admin is all pointy-clicky is just plain false.)
So, you aren't going to get very far in an MCSE program without decent study and test taking skills, but that doesn't mean it's automatic for non-morons.
(Sometimes late at night, way up on the UHF dial, a community college broadcasts MCSE classes. It is pretty funny watching these people who can't figure out the "Printer Wizard", yet still want to be computer technicians. Fortunately the industry is brutal enough that these people will be disabused pretty quickly.)
--
Apparently phantom menace is more of the same special edtion stuff - a bunch of squishy looking computer generated aliens that make cute noises. Oh well, I guess when the target audience is 10 year old kids
Nothing could be worse than that blue muppet thing that played piano in return of the jedi.
--
I think one problem with Stalin's and Mao's political agendas versus Stallman's is that Stalin's and Mao's included killing millions of people. Stalin and Mao had absolute power, Stallman gave up what ever power he might have had by giving away his code. The only thing he's got is a soapbox.
The guy has a right to spout off, and you folks have the right to comment, but calling him "off his rocker", "a crackpot", and so on, is, in my opinion, really out of bounds unless you personally know the man. Unless you think it would be fair to read slashdot a couple months from now and see things like "Rombuu is really a kook because he equated Stallman with Stalin."
--
Good Point
- I think the video-in-the-kernal thing was one of the things that had WinFrame on NT 3.51 only for a long time.
--
Correct. NT WS and NT Server are exactly the same operating system - except for the price, and the fact that WS doesn't include server services.
--
Yeah but turning off the GUI in Windows doesn't give you Windows-with-no-GUI -- It gives you good ol' 640K MS-DOS!
(Someone did hack a 32-bit no-GUI DOS using Win95 VxDs - it had networking and file system caching, but nothing really ran on it.)
--
I myself am sick of reading "IBM has embraced Open Source" just becuase a few AIX configurations ship with Apache. Does anyone actually think that IBM would sell that configation to someone who would buy Lotus Domino instead? Other than a HTML page about "Linux at IBM" and the Jikes thing, IBM hasn't done nothing for open source.
b _wizard/queries/wizard_external_pagesNEW .qry?function=DetailScreen&REQUISITION_uid1=100396 3&TITLE_uid1=Technology%20Manager%2DLinu x)
MacOS/X also ships with Apache, by the way.
So at this point, Apple has done more for "open source" than IBM, and what have they gotten for it? Venom.
(PS Apple's hiring a Linux Technology Manager - https://private.apple.com/cgi-bin/Tango.cgi/hr/we
--
That wouldn't be a "Macintosh G3" would it?
--
When the video-driver-in-the-kernal thing gets dredged up, I always wonder if it really matters.
Servers generally run really generic SVGA or S3 drivers, which don't crash on NT 4, and from a normal user perspective, if your video driver crashes, you pretty much hosed anyway. (Unless the normal users you know like a command prompt.)
Linux doesn't have video drivers in the kernal pretty much only because Unix has never done it that way and Linus doesn't want it. But video on Unix has always been an afterthought, whereas on a client OS like Windows, it's practically the most important thing.
The thing Linux has, that Windows doesn't is compartmentalization. Sure you can run Linux on your 4 meg 386, just disable everything you don't need including X. Microsoft always designs their product around absurdly low standards for marketing reasons (486SX/25 with 16 MB is minimum spec for Windows NT), yet has to make everything kinda-sorta-run. That's why you don't see things like network-transparency with the Windows GUI - it would price them out of the unrealistically low-end market.
--
Well, I think Linus has the valid concern of keeping Linux the same on all architectures.
If you started to see home made platform-specific kernals, I can imagine the situation where that might become standard enough that people would submit patches just for the platform-specific kernal, and not the Linus kernal. This effectively forks the code, especially if RedHat or someone picks up on the patches.
--
So, when GNU formed in the early eighties, it was in order to fight Microsoft?
--
I don't see any irony in the fact that a non-commercial OS gets ported to obscure platforms (cough, Amiga, cough), where a commercial OS that has a revenue stream does not.
Microsoft had a MIPS and PowerPC port. Haven't seen many Non-SGI MIPS or Non-Mac/Non-AIX PowerPC boxes lately have you? They only could push their thumb in Intel's eye for so long before they did the logical thing.
--
Actually I think Novell lowered the cost of a 4.x or 5.x NDS licence to below the cost of 3.x to try to get the base to migrate. Didn't work.
Big companus don't buy a box that says "NetWare" or "Windows NT" - these products are usually annually licenced.
--
Here's what Microsoft does - they march into the MIS Manager's office and offer a year or two of reduced or free software licences. They also fly him to redmond to see some sales presentations and possibly play some golf. All he has to do is pull the plug on Novell or Sun or whatever they got.
So he does it. Conversion costs skyrocket past predicitions, but with some fancy number crunching he shows the CIO and the President how he reduced support costs by 25% by switching to Windows NT. Then he's out of there to something better. After a year or two, Microsoft comes back with the bill, and annual licence and support cost is just as high or higher than Novell's or Sun's.
(By the way, Redhat could easily play this same game against Microsoft.)
--
Windows 2000 ("Cairo") is coming out in 1997.
People took this stuff seriously. So seriously that certain CIOs had bonus clauses based on NT 5 rollouts. The article's author has a point.
--
I recall a study from a while back that indicated the real cost of supporting a computer on a big company network was something like $20-30,000 per year. That included software, hardware, wiring, servers, training, and support.
The biggest chunk (~50%) was support costs. I'm sure if you further break down support costs, you'd find the biggest chunk is labor.
While you can make a good argument that the crappyness of DOS/Windows is a big reason those support costs are as high as they are, I'd bet that the numbers don't look much different in an all NT shop (where the users don't even have Admin rights to screw up their machines).
The point is, from a company standpoint, the Windows licence is a drop in the bucket. Meanwhile, these companies are having trouble hiring techs that can correctly install MS Office, and Unix administrators can bill for $100/hour easily in the Bay Area.
You folks can certainly make a good argument that Linux actually reduces desktop support costs, but I won't believe it until the support talent starts getting much cheaper.
--
"{GNOME and KDE} may make the desktop more "integrated," but they do slow the system down."
Most of my home computer's CPU time is burned up waiting for me to decide what to click or to remember a particular command sequence. A functional GUI may slow the "computer" down, but it makes the human faster.
--
Yes, we certainly are. Precisely what 'free software' or 'open source' means is what our community is founded upon.
First, I don't think Apple claimed that OS/X was Free in either the Beer or the Speech sense.
Second, can't you have one definition of "Linux has open source code" and Mr. Mac Developer over there have can have a different definition of "Darwin has open source code." If he's happy, does it really concern you?
(Also, do you have a link handy for the Alan Cox article? Thx.)
--
Blame it on SlshDt.
--
LDAP is a generalized protocol which allows you to 'look up' user names and attributes. NDS is a hellva lot more than a protocol. I believe an NDS server will talk LDAP if you want it to.
My understanding is there still is a few problems with LDAP as an authentication scheme.
--
My view of the root problem:
Someone says "Open Source", and the GNU, Debian, and all of the various advocacy splinter groups people immedately think "We represent Open Source, they must be talking about us! But they didn't get our buy-in! Quick - publish a manifesto!"
Meanwhile the Linux and BSD user base hears "Open Source" and they think "Open Source - they must be competeing against Linux/BSD! Flame On!"
The truth of the matter is that Apple isn't advertising or trying to reach out to any of these people. (GNU/Debian/OSI/PSI/Linux/BSD people just do not make up a significant portion of Apple's customer base.) They're reaching out to their traditional base of Mac hackers and Mac software/hardware companies to try to make their new OS as popular and supported as possible.
Right now, the MacOS is such a shifting morass of interfaces that it seems that any particular piece of hardware or software has a good chance of breaking as soon as you throw an OS upgrade or a new Mac model at it. Having a stable and open foundation to solve this problem is a huge benifit to Mac users. It's really a non-issue to you if you are into Linux/BSD/Hurd or whatever.
--
I've got a old box here connecting via Samba using the Microsoft LanMan DOS client. Works great - supports IP and domain authentication although it's harder to set up than the Novell DOS client.
I don't know if any one has a better solution -- I guess there must be a NFS client for DOS, but that probably costs money.
--