NetBSD's stability looks fine here.:) 156 days w/ absolutely no signs of degradation. That's 156 days since the initial setup up the machine (i.e., after transferring data from a different-type filesystem and building a custom kernel), and my first experience with NetBSD. Of course, the FreeBSD box next to it has a similar uptime (as has the Linux box..)
I think it says something about all of them that the most limiting factor for uptime is the size of your UPS and eagerness to upgrade.
Regarding the original topic at hand, I think it really depends on how eager the poster is to jump head-first into a real unix environment. I personally think it's nice to learn it the hard way first, so you know the underlying principles and can easily pick up new flavors.
Of course, if you don't care about OS or having unix skills, the one with the easiest install and prettiest out-of-the-box desktop configuration would be the obvious choice, imho. The only 2 unices I've really used as workstation os's have been Linux and Solaris, though, so I can't really comment on how the BSD's compare.. (fwiw, Linux beats Solaris to a pulp in that department, and I suspect *BSD would, too)
Anyway, how would a text-only program do mouse support? Try to support gpm, xterm, etc.? I'd rather the developers spend their time on something more worthwhile.
I think the best approach would be to make a simple gui for it (think gvim) That way you can use xmutt with the mouse.
Of course, the (probably better) alternative is to just use an MUA that was designed to work in a GUI-fied way if that's the sort of thing you're into. Somehow I get the impression the complaint about no mouse support was actually a complaint about the lack of a drool-proof GUI interface.
It is interesting that they don't mention WINE as competition. Normally ZDNet not mentioning the Open Source product wouldn't surprise me, but this *is* a Linux article.
It's slightly interesting, but perhaps not in the way you're thinking. This article appears to be a reworded version of the Press Release that Mainsoft released Monday.
I think it's more a case of ZDNet continuing to illustrate that they are not concerned with journalism. Even google turns up hits on their site for Wine, but the last one by Mary Jo is from December, 1998... And it's doubtful whether a zdnet type can remember that long. At least they toned the press release down a bit, and ran it through demoronizer, though.
For instance, the subheading of the press release is: "Mainsoft? Corporation First to Address Market Demand for Applications on the Linux Operating System" - Which actually reflects as doubly disingenuous of Mainsoft, as Corel has been doing much work on Winelib *and* using it to port all of their applications to Linux. (not to mention Netscape, Star Division, etc, who have supported Linux before any "HOT IT INDUSTRY" trade mag had ever mentioned Linux)
This brings to mind some comments Mary Jo Foley made in an article where the "HOT IT INDUSTRY" trade mags were holding a Slashdot bashing. She said that it was weird how Slashdot would "slant" things, eg., they would pick out the parts that made Microsoft look stupid, rather than hightlight the article a real -journalist- would.
I get the idea that her idea of a real journalist's job is to further polish and sensationalize press releases and product announcements so as to better fit the audience the magazine targets. Fun stuff, those editorial policies.
On top of this, due to the mission critical nature of the boxes (they are used nation wide), we have extensive change management controls. Any patch that we apply would have to have a corresponding backout procedure. It is much easier to consider a patch as one big patch than 21 individual patches. Sure, us tech people know that they are really one and the same. But try telling the change managment people that.
I don't know how you do things in your neck of the woods, but to change management at my company, a new installation would be considered 1 change. i.e., New webserver with all errata packages applied. Now, during the production, you tend to get them in more manageable chunks - usually 1 at a time.
Speaking of enterprise environments, though, I think it would be unfair to leave out Solaris 7. It has 22 security-related patches as listed here: ftp://sunsolve6.Sun.COM/pub/patches/Solaris7.Patch Report Do you run Solaris at your site? If so, did you install all of those? Here, we've got scripts that install those patches on the Solaris boxes. Of course, change management is involved, too.
Sure, it would be nice if Red Hat paid more attention to security and quality control, but that's why I tend to stick with Debian & FreeBSD when feasible.:)
Take a look at the Guides at http://www.linuxdoc.org/ Specifically the User Guide and Installation & Getting started guide are helpful in this regard.
Another good resource for new users is http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ which is home the NHF (newbieized help file) and has web-based dicussion forums.
Other good resources for hard-to-find info are http://www.deja.com/ (a usenet search engine), http://www.google.com/ (THE search engine), and http://www.freshmeat.net/ (the canonical software search engine).. Freshmeat itself doesn't necessarily have the info, but the software packages for any given type of application tend to have useful links. For instance, the xawtv site that I found by searching freshmeat had the drivers necessary for the WinTV 401 card I recently configured, and the cdrecord site, as found on freshmeat, has a ton of useful cd burning resources.
CUPS is provided under the GNU General Public License, Version 2. A copy of this license follows this introduction. For those not familiar with the GNU General Public License, the license basically allows you to:
Use the CUPS software at no charge. Distribute verbatim copies of the software in source or binary form. Sell verbatim copies of the software for a media fee, or sell support for the software. Distribute or sell printer drivers and filters that use the CUPS API so long as source code is made available under the GPL.
What this license does not allow you to do is make changes or add features to CUPS and then sell a binary distribution without source code. You have to provide source for any new drivers, changes, or additions to the software, and all code must be provided under the GPL.
It says the same thing in the LICENSE.txt file in their source distribution. Where did you see the other license? Perhaps they saw your message and changed it real quick?;) In any case, that they allow GPL distro *or* for-pay proprietary redistribution does not prevent any Linux distro from use it.
Actually, it's not that unusual. That's the way qt licensing has worked for some time now, and it was debated endlessly a while back.;)
After going over the FAQ, I think cups looks like a decent system. It improves the way that printing works, allows for free drivers to be written (they've even got a database for them) and if you're the type who "needs it for REAL work", you can get the proprietary drivers to do it with. Sort of like XFree86's relation to AcceleratedX, but in reverse (since the cups guys are giving the free infrastructure to base everything on) That's a pretty kind thing of a proprietary-software making company to do. Usually those just find ways to lock you in (eg., EVERY system on the network needs to buy our proprietary driver! or.. If you use our package, you can only use OUR drivers!) etc.
I have a server system on a K6-2 400 (w/ Asus P5A) that currently has an uptime in excess of 130 days. And, my workstation has had similar uptimes with its k6/233(w/ FIC PA-2011) Even my AMD 486/100 could do that before the power supply in its case died.;) Granted, the Pentium Pro and Alpha have similar histories, but I haven't been able to witness any of these problems you speak of with my AMD-based systems.
Btw, I was going over the AMD K7 system building guide (the pdf) the other day, and noticed they had 2 things your friend may be interested in - a recommendation of going with no less than a 300 watt power supply and a video card compatibility list. Since all the reviews I've seen have remarked how stable all of the boards / chips are, I have a feeling it could be one of those causing the problem. If not, it's time to take advantage of a warranty.;)
It also supports vitually no hardware - we had a job getting monitors and video/sound cards that it supports. It's also pretty unstable. For instance, when the students run Netscape, 4% or so of Web pages crash the machine. I don't just mean crash Netscape - they chuck you out of X and back to the login screen (this amuses the students no end as they lose all their code).
In case you were unaware, XFree86 runs on Solaris x86. I've got it running on one of the machines I use. It's a bit of a maintenance overhead, as you can't just use the Sun installer and get everything up and going in 15 minutes, but I think it's worth it. For instance, on top of the added video support, you can also choose between all the standard bitdepths, not only 8 or 24. If you replace Xsun and CDE, you may notice stability improvements, also.:)
"Microsoft has had more than three months to respond to the challenge and we haven't heard a word from them," said Jeremy Burton, vice president of server marketing at Oracle. "This is because SQL Server 7.0 is years behind in data warehousing technology, they have yet to publish a single TPC-D result. Any customer considering SQL Server should have serious concerns about their failure to demonstrate performance in the critical Data Warehousing space".
Why won't they just GPL it, do they think they have some real investment to LOSE!?!? They already lost it when they made the client free! Mozilla's not quite the same as just making the Netscape codebase open. Isn't Mozilla a ground-up rewrite? And a buggy one at that!
They couldn't GPL all of what's in Communiator for the simple reason that they don't own all the code. For a simple illustration, enter about: in the Location box. They'd have to convince all of those companies to also release their included code under the GPL.
Isn't Mozilla a ground-up rewrite?
No. It's similar to FreeBSD's relation to the orignal BSD distribution. In Mozilla's case, Netscape released all the Communicator source it was legal to release (Communicator-detox) under their open source license. The Mozilla team took all the original bits that had been freed, filled in the gaps, and started improving. It's just that the Mozilla project had a big larger of a task because the layout engine they inherited was due for a replacement. imho, that's a much nicer obstacle than a dubious lawsuit, though.;)
Regarding newbie-friendly docs, http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ has NHFs (newbieized help files). On the LDP, the Guides - particularly the Installation and Getting Started Guide and the Linux Users' Guide are informative and accessible.
Bruce Perens seems to enjoy that sort of thing. He was the primary author of the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Perhaps you should check out his website - http://www.technocrat.net/
The only beauty I find in Unix are SGI fonts and Enlightenment widget designs.
What about that little yellow sparkly feature in Irix's window manger? You know, the one that appears on icons you've just clicked to launch an app and keeps sparkling until the app window appears.:) Every other environment I've seen has had the "Please wait while program loads" syndrome, first a simple text message, then a watch, hourglass, etc. Contrast the sparkly, which instead of saying "you're going to be bored for a bit" says "Something cool is about to happen!"
such as, the Trillian Project at http://www.linuxia64.com/, Andy Grove's cameo at Linuxworld in San Jose, and Intel offering access ia64 boxes for people to promote porting software. How much more do you need?
I think that the folks handling Alpha could learn from this in a big way. Intel is helping to get gcc up-to-snuff on their ia64 chips.... Meanwhile... Compaq releases a beta of the compiler formerly known as Digital Unix's cc as closed source. And only offers it in.rpm format.
Actually, it's not redundant. Some device drivers for Linux are part of the kernel distribution (eg., it's inside linux-2.2.12.tar.bz2 and will be found by their search engine), and some of the device drivers are not - such as all the video card drivers in XFree86 (which they do have a link to, at least), video card drivers not yet in XFree86, support for brand new ethernet card variations (that people like Donald Becker will have available seperately, but haven't made it into the kernel yet), OSS Commercial sound drivers and ALSA sound drivers to name some.
For real cutting-edge stuff that you can't find in their search engine, a look at the Hardware Compatibility HOWTO, a search of www.deja.com for something like "Linux 3COM OfficeConnect", or a specific HOWTO like the Ethernet HOWTO would help.
Inspiring comment..:) Here's one that I came up with at Paragon Technology, substituting the k6-III/450 for a K7/500, as I think the K7's strengths more closely match the G4's and it provides a more reasonable upgrade path (than a K6-III). I also switched Seagate drives for IBM, as I've had better experiences with IBM (which actually hurt my price some), and the IDE CD-ROM for a SCSI one - for even ignoring the difference between ide/scsi performancewise, those IRQ's can be precious.;)
Guns equalize people so that people can't use superior physical prowess to overpower victims.
Actually, guns don't equalize people -- they just change the grounds of competition from physical strength to "aggresssion", or "willingness to use a gun". So they would select for a society of the short-tempered, rather than the merely strong.
Actually, guns do equalize people in the physical respect. Given the willingness to defend yourself, with a gun you have a chance to defend yourself where you may not have before. Removing the right of everyone to have a gun (and by extension, the physical capacity to defend themselves) because some people are not willing to defend themselves is counterproductive. I'll even go out on a limb and suggest that the people who are not willing to defend themselves wouldn't be carrying guns in the first place. Even then, other people who *are* willing to defend themselves are likely to defend others also (the others being those who prefer to be passive victims rather than resort to self-defense), which results in a net gain. So, the system is selecting for will to live (with the exception of discouraging initiating physical threats to others to that end)
I don't know what the solution is, but I doubt it will involve banning guns -- they have such an important role as symbols of individual identity and freedom that any attempt to curtail them would definitely have bad consequences.
A total "solution" would be to tear off everyone's arms and legs, then remove their teeth & restrain them to beds, nourishing them with tubes. That pretty much removes anyone's capacity to physically harm anyone else. That concept worked in The Matrix, didn't it? (can't have your power cells off destroying each other!) On the other hand, we can just accept the risks (and reap the gains) of freedom and allow people to watch out for themselves..;)
The source of my "England has higher rates of robbery than the US" was the pdf file linked at this page (which states it as "England and Wales" - which I'm assuming have similar approaches regarding gun control):
Another source that corroborates that is here: http://public-policy.org/~ncpa/pi/crime/oct98a.h tml
Also, a generally interesting analysis regarding gun control its relation to crime rates is here: http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Cramer/us.ca nada.html
So rather than look at the reasons why someone wants to attack you, just blow them away? The police are there to stop the kind of abuse you describe, when individuals use your excuse it simply becomes vigilante tactics.
The police's responsibility is to protect the public at large, not individuals. They don't have the responsibility or the capability to protect each and every person. Regarding the reason someone wants to attack you, what if it's "Because you're female, and I get my jollies by raping and killing females". Is transferring the blame of this sort of attack to the victims really a decent approach to the problem? The reason could also be "I wanted some money to get high, so I'll try my luck at robbing you". (and recently, England has had more robbery per-capita than the United States - modern society, even in England, still has crime)
Charlton Heston, the mouthpiece of the NRA, argued that the way to prevent Columbine like tragedies was to post armed guards in schools. What the hell does this teach children? That it's OK to bear arms, because if you abuse them you'll get shot?
I suppose it teaches them the same thing that an armed police force and populace does.. If you decide to start killing people, someone will be there to stop you.
I'm sorry but that's an insane notion. Remove the guns, and you don't have a problem. As someone else has commented, in the UK we don't have a problem with stabbings in schools (one incident this decade), so people arent going to make a switch to alternative weapons.
One of the problems with your suggestion is that "remove the guns" (from the society) is easier said than done. Also, due to what I've already stated (equalization offered by guns, human right to self defense, etc), outlawing guns in the United States at large is not the answer. Tightly controlled access to schools in particular (like we do with airports and courtrooms) is a possible step that could be taken. I won't argue with that.
With regard to the bombs, I will agree that Klebold and Harris were determined to cause mayhem. However, in the vast majority of cases where someone goes `postal' they simply use a gun. I am sure it is a bogus notion to insist that anyone considering a killing spree will automatically use pipebombs if guns are unavailable. In the UK and Europe I cannot recall a single incident involving non-politically motivated killers and pipebombs.
This is a complex issue which has more to do with societies than with particular weapon choices. In Switzerland, all adult males are required to have firearms as part of their military program. Yet, the murder rate in Switzerland is much lower than in England. In Sweden, firearms are essentially banned, and the murder rate is also lower than England's. The idea in the United States is that individuals have the right to protect themselves. That your country's crime rate tends to be low is not a very comforting thought if your safety is immediately or imminently threatened and the police say "We can only do something *after* a crime has been committed"
I realize that I'm responding to what appears to be flamebait, but going back and saying "some of our coverage has been demonstrated wrong" is a good thing rather than a bad thing.
Of course, some of the coverage was right, too. A large part of the Jon Katz series on the matter was about how people were being unfairly targeted as potential killers because of distorted media coverage at the time. And, iirc, some of it was about how things such as what's illustrated in the Carrie movies can happen if people are pushed too far (which they're saying now was not the case this time, but imho, is still is a valid point)
Slashdot Mirror
NetBSD 1.4 alpha
$uptime
11:35PM up 156 days, 3:04, 4 users, load averages: 1.21, 1.01, 0.69
NetBSD's stability looks fine here. :) 156 days w/ absolutely no signs of degradation. That's 156 days since the initial setup up the machine (i.e., after transferring data from a different-type filesystem and building a custom kernel), and my first experience with NetBSD. Of course, the FreeBSD box next to it has a similar uptime (as has the Linux box..)
I think it says something about all of them that the most limiting factor for uptime is the size of your UPS and eagerness to upgrade.
Regarding the original topic at hand, I think it really depends on how eager the poster is to jump head-first into a real unix environment. I personally think it's nice to learn it the hard way first, so you know the underlying principles and can easily pick up new flavors.
Of course, if you don't care about OS or having unix skills, the one with the easiest install and prettiest out-of-the-box desktop configuration would be the obvious choice, imho. The only 2 unices I've really used as workstation os's have been Linux and Solaris, though, so I can't really comment on how the BSD's compare.. (fwiw, Linux beats Solaris to a pulp in that department, and I suspect *BSD would, too)
Of course, the (probably better) alternative is to just use an MUA that was designed to work in a GUI-fied way if that's the sort of thing you're into. Somehow I get the impression the complaint about no mouse support was actually a complaint about the lack of a drool-proof GUI interface.
I think it's more a case of ZDNet continuing to illustrate that they are not concerned with journalism. Even google turns up hits on their site for Wine, but the last one by Mary Jo is from December, 1998 ... And it's doubtful whether a zdnet type can remember that long. At least they toned the press release down a bit, and ran it through demoronizer, though.
For instance, the subheading of the press release is: "Mainsoft? Corporation First to Address Market Demand for Applications on the Linux Operating System" - Which actually reflects as doubly disingenuous of Mainsoft, as Corel has been doing much work on Winelib *and* using it to port all of their applications to Linux. (not to mention Netscape, Star Division, etc, who have supported Linux before any "HOT IT INDUSTRY" trade mag had ever mentioned Linux)
This brings to mind some comments Mary Jo Foley made in an article where the "HOT IT INDUSTRY" trade mags were holding a Slashdot bashing. She said that it was weird how Slashdot would "slant" things, eg., they would pick out the parts that made Microsoft look stupid, rather than hightlight the article a real -journalist- would.
I get the idea that her idea of a real journalist's job is to further polish and sensationalize press releases and product announcements so as to better fit the audience the magazine targets. Fun stuff, those editorial policies.
The Red Cross' International Response Fund goes to this sort of thing. Here's an article about what they did to help during Taiwan quake in September.
gabber is the hardcore (raver-type music) You can tell because it says "motherfucker" a lot. The opposite raver-type music is called happy hardcore.
I think a big reason could be that TurboLinux's presence in the Asian market with their Chinese & Japenese distros.
Speaking of enterprise environments, though, I think it would be unfair to leave out Solaris 7. It has 22 security-related patches as listed here: ftp://sunsolve6.Sun.COM/pub/patches/Solaris7.Patch Report Do you run Solaris at your site? If so, did you install all of those? Here, we've got scripts that install those patches on the Solaris boxes. Of course, change management is involved, too.
Sure, it would be nice if Red Hat paid more attention to security and quality control, but that's why I tend to stick with Debian & FreeBSD when feasible. :)
Another good resource for new users is http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ which is home the NHF (newbieized help file) and has web-based dicussion forums.
Other good resources for hard-to-find info are http://www.deja.com/ (a usenet search engine), http://www.google.com/ (THE search engine), and http://www.freshmeat.net/ (the canonical software search engine) .. Freshmeat itself doesn't necessarily have the info, but the software packages for any given type of application tend to have useful links. For instance, the xawtv site that I found by searching freshmeat had the drivers necessary for the WinTV 401 card I recently configured, and the cdrecord site, as found on freshmeat, has a ton of useful cd burning resources.
After going over the FAQ, I think cups looks like a decent system. It improves the way that printing works, allows for free drivers to be written (they've even got a database for them) and if you're the type who "needs it for REAL work", you can get the proprietary drivers to do it with. Sort of like XFree86's relation to AcceleratedX, but in reverse (since the cups guys are giving the free infrastructure to base everything on) That's a pretty kind thing of a proprietary-software making company to do. Usually those just find ways to lock you in (eg., EVERY system on the network needs to buy our proprietary driver! or.. If you use our package, you can only use OUR drivers!) etc.
I have a server system on a K6-2 400 (w/ Asus P5A) that currently has an uptime in excess of 130 days. And, my workstation has had similar uptimes with its k6/233(w/ FIC PA-2011) Even my AMD 486/100 could do that before the power supply in its case died. ;) Granted, the Pentium Pro and Alpha have similar histories, but I haven't been able to witness any of these problems you speak of with my AMD-based systems.
;)
Btw, I was going over the AMD K7 system building guide (the pdf) the other day, and noticed they had 2 things your friend may be interested in - a recommendation of going with no less than a 300 watt power supply and a video card compatibility list. Since all the reviews I've seen have remarked how stable all of the boards / chips are, I have a feeling it could be one of those causing the problem. If not, it's time to take advantage of a warranty.
Regarding newbie-friendly docs, http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ has NHFs (newbieized help files). On the LDP, the Guides - particularly the Installation and Getting Started Guide and the Linux Users' Guide are informative and accessible.
Bruce Perens seems to enjoy that sort of thing. He was the primary author of the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Perhaps you should check out his website - http://www.technocrat.net/
such as, the Trillian Project at http://www.linuxia64.com/, Andy Grove's cameo at Linuxworld in San Jose, and Intel offering access ia64 boxes for people to promote porting software. How much more do you need?
I think that the folks handling Alpha could learn from this in a big way. Intel is helping to get gcc up-to-snuff on their ia64 chips. ... Meanwhile ... Compaq releases a beta of the compiler formerly known as Digital Unix's cc as closed source. And only offers it in .rpm format.
Actually, it's not redundant. Some device drivers for Linux are part of the kernel distribution (eg., it's inside linux-2.2.12.tar.bz2 and will be found by their search engine), and some of the device drivers are not - such as all the video card drivers in XFree86 (which they do have a link to, at least), video card drivers not yet in XFree86, support for brand new ethernet card variations (that people like Donald Becker will have available seperately, but haven't made it into the kernel yet), OSS Commercial sound drivers and ALSA sound drivers to name some.
For real cutting-edge stuff that you can't find in their search engine, a look at the Hardware Compatibility HOWTO, a search of www.deja.com for something like "Linux 3COM OfficeConnect", or a specific HOWTO like the Ethernet HOWTO would help.
Inspiring comment.. :) Here's one that I came up with at Paragon Technology, substituting the k6-III/450 for a K7/500, as I think the K7's strengths more closely match the G4's and it provides a more reasonable upgrade path (than a K6-III). I also switched Seagate drives for IBM, as I've had better experiences with IBM (which actually hurt my price some), and the IDE CD-ROM for a SCSI one - for even ignoring the difference between ide/scsi performancewise, those IRQ's can be precious. ;)
Anyway, onto my box!
AMD K7-500
Enlight EN-7233 ATX Mid Tower Case w/235W AGI P/S (K7)
Dual Turbine K7 Cooling Kit (Double Fan)
Yamaha 6/4/16X 6416S SCSI-2 CD-RW
Toshiba 40X CD-ROM Drive - Internal SCSI-2
IBM DNES-318350U 18.2GB U2/WS (7ms-2M-7200rpm)
FIC SD11, Slot A, ATX, U/ATA66, (5/1/1X2) 3DIMMs
Intel 8475B EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI 10BT/100BTAdaptec AHA-2940U2W PCI W-U2 SCSI Bus Master
Matrox Millennium G400 16MB SGRAM AGP
PC100 128MB SDRAM 16Mx64 - Crucial Tech (Micron Original K7)
Iomega 100MB Zip SCSI
Parts Price: $2648.40
Shipping: $51.75
Geek total: $2700.15
Assembly (estimate): 150.00
End User Total: $2850.15
The source of my "England has higher rates of robbery than the US" was the pdf file linked at this page (which states it as "England and Wales" - which I'm assuming have similar approaches regarding gun control):
h tm
h tml
a nada.html
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cjusew96.
Another source that corroborates that is here:
http://public-policy.org/~ncpa/pi/crime/oct98a.
Also, a generally interesting analysis regarding gun control its relation to crime rates is here:
http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Cramer/us.c
Of course, some of the coverage was right, too. A large part of the Jon Katz series on the matter was about how people were being unfairly targeted as potential killers because of distorted media coverage at the time. And, iirc, some of it was about how things such as what's illustrated in the Carrie movies can happen if people are pushed too far (which they're saying now was not the case this time, but imho, is still is a valid point)