This, I think, is probably where we'll want to be paying some attention next.
You accuse Slashdot of being "behind the curve" but don't get too uppity. The "research" on Groklaw is always post event and mostly consists of repetition and highlighting of what the real protagonists - the lawyers - have already argued days or even weeks before.
Groklaw is little more than a news site with a very limited scope. Useful to us, because we can stay informed, but don't big note its role. The commentary does not and will not have significant bearing on the outcome. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
1993: Doom released
1994: Doom II released
1996: Quake released
1997: Quake II released
1999: Quake III released
Oh, I've got a better history.
1993: Doom released
1 month later I go broke buying a 486
1994: Doom II released
1 month later I go broke buying a better 486
1996: Quake released
1 month later I go broke buying a Pentium
1997: Quake II released
1 month later I go broke buying a Pentium MMX
1999: Quake III released
1 month later I go broke buying a Celeron
id Software is the bane of my existence. Curse you Carmack!
I'm running Debian/unstable on a 12" G4 Powerbook. It's pretty good but there are some issues.
You will need the latest Linux kernel. I'm running 2.6.7. A few months ago you would have needed the benh kernel but all the stuff you need has now been rolled back into the Linus kernel.
Even with the latest kernel you will not get full support from your hardware. Here are the big issues:
The nvidia chipset isn't fully supported. No backlight graduations (it's either on or off). No 3D support. The 2D support isn't amazing either. The G4 iBook was much better for video (the Radeon 9200 was great for 3D) but the Powerbook G4 is a better overall laptop.
No support for the Airport Extreme. That sucks the big one. And I don't know if you can install any other mini-PCI cards in the Powerbook without voiding the warranty.
The modem isn't supported either. Well, it is if you pay money for a binary-only driver from Linuxant, but bugger that for a lark. They can go to hell.
No sleep support at all. If this is a problem for you then don't install Linux. It annoys me but I'm living with it.
All the other hardware works well. DVD, CDRW, USB2, Firewire, audio, Ethernet, CPU scaling, etc.
Debian packages everything you need but doesn't configure anything the way you want it. So the initial configuration time is quite significant. I took 2-3 weeks to fix all the annoying problems (eg, the trackpad would trigger a mouse click when I tapped it with my thumb; fixed that with the trackpad program).
I recommend installing the powerpc-utils, pmud-utils, and powernowd packages. You should also enable dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation and vm/laptop_mode.
I know a lot of people with similar G4 laptops (12" or 17", nobody with 15" for some reason). They all think I'm mad for running Linux. But I like Linux. I tried MacOSX and despite being a UNIX-like OS and supposedly the "greatest GUI in existence", I just didn't like it as much as Debian and GNOME. If the sleep worked I'd be ecstatic. I'm sometimes tempted to switch to MacOSX just for sleep support but I've never been annoyed enough to switch.
Because I am tired of the mounds of shit involved with Windows. Every 5 minutes there seems to be a virus. My disk is 15% fragemented and after running defrags 3 times over the last 48 hours it is no better.
Ok, that's great. You've identified your primary reason for switching to Linux is security and your secondary reason is that Windows requires too much maintenance.
I don't think any Linux distribution will ease your maintenance woes. Although I find Linux a lot easier to maintain than Windows I know this isn't the case for the majority of users. You should definitely avoid the high-maintenance and high-experience distributions like Debian and Gentoo (disclaimer: I personally use Debian).
Regarding security, any distribution that regularly updates their packages in response to (or preempts) CERT advisories would be fine. You don't want to get into secure distributions like Smoothwall; they will not give you a good desktop experience. Nor do you want to use Linux distros like Knoppix that don't have a formal mechanism for deliving security updates.
I think a paid and supported version of SuSe, Mandrake or RedHat would be your best bet. They offer the best balance between ease-of-use, ease-of-administration, cutting edge features, and automated security updates.
I also just want to start using something better.
Don't kid yourself that Linux is "better". It is different. For some jobs it can be better. For some jobs it can be worse.
I'm being serious. You state your requirements up front:
I am a software developer, writing client/GUI software in C# (.NET) on Windows and server software in a UNIX environment... I definitely still need to run Win2k (in a VM would be preferable) for testing and other purposes, but want to live as much of my monitor facing life as I can in Linux.
You are a Windows client developer and you need Windows for testing ergo you should run Windows as your desktop. If you have other unstated reasons for wanting to switch to Linux then I suggest you tell us what they are. We can't just guess at why you want to run Linux.
Remember that you can run Linux in emulation on Windows too. Either in Virtual PC, VMware (I know VMware isn't really emulation), or even the free QEMU these days. So any desire to have the "server software" on your laptop shouldn't be a deciding reason to switch to a Linux desktop.
At the risk of offending some, I must say that this kind of setiment is one thing that's hurting Linux growth.
Couple of points.
I'd be fine with it if Linux growth stops right now. It's a good size, there's a high percentage of developers, we wield enough buying power to get the attention of many hardware manufacturers, we have mountains of software, etc. Sure, I wouldn't mind if Linux achieves "World Domination", but I wouldn't compromise the benefits of Linux (like no licensing hassles) in order to increase the size. As RMS loves to say, be wary of companies bearing gifts who merely ask that you relinquish a little freedom in exchange. It's a Faustian bargain.
I agree that closed-source applications can be a good thing but only when they add value. I don't see a closed-source DVD player as being particularly useful to modern Linux distributions. I've been using Totem for ages and it works fine, including menus, and Totem integrates nicely with the GNOME desktop. PowerDVD isn't even a decent player (I've used it on Windows and it sucked) so why would I care about PowerDVD on Linux?
Final point. Apparently software patents and the DMCA makes it illegal to use DVD players like Totem but legal to use PowerDVD. That just shits me. My software choices being dictated by some pathetic USPTO decision. I'd rather not play DVDs at all.
Don't get me wrong, Open Source is good is a good thing but you should pay for your codecs like everyone else does. Reverse engineering codecs/encryption methods without paying royalties is just as bad as software piracy.
I disagree. Software piracy I'll agree is 100% wrong. Software patents on the other hand are an abomination in computing.
I grew up poor and I had to work hard to get where I am today.
Boo fucking hoo. So did many of the rest of us. But that doesn't mean we all agree with you that software patents are a good thing.
Then, there are those people who insist upon using uncommon words and structuring painfully complex sentences in an attempt to impress people when a simple sentence would be much more effective. I had a student like that in my senior design lab. He would write really long sentences describing his design that would cause me to reread everything two or three times. Then, another student had an inferior design but explained it very well. Anyone care to guess who got the higher grade (on the written portion)?
Student #1: "The quadrature radial encoder transmits a series of unsigned binary positions and a checksum through a radio frequency (RF) channel to the monitoring terminal, where the results will be dissiminated to the proper interfaces."
Student #2: "The sensor communicates with the computer through RF."
I'm hoping the first one. The second one conveys no information about the transmission other than it used RF. What is the computer doing? What does the sensor measure? What happens to the data? Hopefully you had a third student who wrote:
Student #3: The temperature sensor communicates with the monitoring terminal through RF. The encoding scheme is quadrature radial encoding [Bib199]. This encoding consists of unsigned binary positions and a checksum to detect data corruption. The monitoring terminal is an IBM computer with multiple outgoing interfaces. It demultiplexes the data stream from the sensor.
The first student needs a smack in the head for that run-on sentence but the second student is a lousy engineer. If they can't describe the situation more precisely than "communicates with RF" in a written report then I wouldn't want them anywhere near my team.
Seeing this, it implies to me that you are just ranting with no idea what you talking about. The part of FreeBSD that Apple is not using is the kernel.
The kernel in MacOS X is a hybrid between Mach and BSD, primarily FreeBSD. This is well documented.
Above the Mach layer, the BSD layer provides "OS personality" APIs and services. The BSD layer is based on the BSD kernel, primarily FreeBSD. The BSD component provides
file systems
networking (except for the hardware device level)
UNIX security model
syscall support
the BSD process model, including process IDs and signals
FreeBSD kernel APIs
many of the POSIX APIs
kernel support for pthreads (POSIX threads)
So unless you think the Apple website is wrong and they don't really use FreeBSD in their kernel, despite their own developer's website saying that they do, I think you might be mistaken.
A small portion of those titles were distributed with Solaris 8 (I'm thinking less than a half dozen. That was the release they added ssh and Apache.)
Less than half a dozen? Solaris 8 shipped with an entire CD full of free software; the Companion CD. It was out in at least 2001. There's a manifest on the sunfreeware website. It's 130 packages.
I don't quite understand why you keep harping on OpenOffice too. They bought a failing company producing an office productivity suite because they wanted some sort of word processing and spreadsheet option to sell with the workstation systems. It was sort of like SGI buying the MIPS CPU maker. It wasn't good for them to do, but it would be disastrous for them no to do.
I see. So OpenOffice doesn't count as a contribution to the open source movement because the company they bought the code from was failing.
Apple has given a lot more to the open source movement that IBM or Sun.
By what measurement?
By lines of code? How many lines of code are in OpenOffice anyway?
By the number of kernel improvements to Linux? I don't recall seeing Apple's name on RCU.
How about marketing dollars? I'm pretty sure IBM is just beating HP for that title.
By legitimizing OSS in the corporate world? Pretty sure IBM wins that one. Heck, OSX users probably don't even know they're using OSS.
Or how about units of OSS software shipped? I am pretty sure Sun wins again; OSS and GNU has been bundled with Solaris for years and Sun ships a lot of boxes.
By their contributions to the BSDs? Apple uses FreeBSD a lot but it's only a trickle back. Sure, they give some gnawed bones to the FreeBSD kernel guys, but what about the rest of BSD?
Are you measuring all the boring stuff like documentation and testing and selling? Because I think Sun and IBM both beat Apple there too.
Hell, what metric are you using to convince yourself that Apple has "given a lot more" than IBM or Sun? I'm really interested to know. I realise that Apple uses a lot of open source software and they are responsible for a lot of FreeBSD-based desktops and servers, but using software isn't the same thing as giving.
My own personal list of companies who have given the most to OSS (in no particular order):
RedHat - despite their small size they have still given significant actual value to the open source movement. They legitimized Linux to a large number of businesses. And they are BIG contributors of code which can be used by both Linux and BSD distributions. All modern Linux and BSD distributions have some RedHat funded code in there somehwere (yes, even the BSDs).
Sun - despite their reviled status as "TeH Grate SatUN" they have given us NFSV4, OpenOffice, lots of GNOME stuff (code and HIG and testing), significant numbers of Linux server and desktop deployments, and Sun played a big part in BSDs early history.
IBM - their marketing dollars, their lawyers who are the actual fighters in the lawsuit from SCO (as opposed to the delusional people who only think they're making a difference), their code contributions, and their legitimization of Linux. IBM is a great ally (who would have thought so given their behaviour in the 80s).
I'd rank Apple somewhere in the top 10 but they're playing well behind those 3. I reckon Apple probably ranks below Novell, SGI, HP and fricking Intel in terms of contributions to the open source movement. I certainly would not place them in first place. They're a good contributor, and they have given a lot, but have they given the most? No way!
Microsoft has to be careful about what kind of application software it ships with Windows.
Sure, but IBM and HP and Dell don't have to be so careful. They can ship whatever applications they damn well feel like.
The reality is that Linux doesn't ship with all the application software. Go to www.kernel.org and you can see Linux ships with no application software. The distributions bundle Linux with the application software. There are dozens of distributions who all offer different application bundles. That's how it should be.
Similarly the OEMs pick and choose what they bundle with Windows. The previous IBM notebook I bought had third party fax software, photo editing software, etc. Dell had a different bundle. HP had a different bundle again. The local whitebox store bundles 1,000 shareware games. This is also how it should be.
Microsoft got in trouble a few years ago because they informed all the OEMs that they must ship Microsoft's web browser in order to receive bulk discounts on Microsoft's operating system. Some OEMs wanted to ship Netscape's web browser but Microsoft put a stop to that through economic force. That's illegal because it is anti-competitive.
The article gets it wrong. It claims that Linux gets away with it because there are multiple IRC clients in every Linux distribution. That's not the reason. The OEMs could bundle an IRC client with Windows if they wanted to but there are high support costs associated with bundling an application. Every application in an OEM bundle must have a "wizard" for their help desk and that costs money. If the OEM doesn't think that the increased revenue from bundling an IRC client would outweigh the associated costs then the OEM simply won't bundle it. The Linux distributions don't offer the same level of support, so there's no reason for them not to bundle an IRC client. Indeed, there's no reason for them not to bundle ALL the IRC clients. The proof of this argument is in the newer distributions like Linspire. They offer greater levels of support but they don't bundle as many applications. I predict that as distributions become more focussed they will lose the variety, or at least relegate the variety to "supplemental" discs.
Microsoft could solve this problem (if indeed it is a problem) the same way Linux does: allow third parties to produce customised builds of Windows. Unfortunately his means your version of Windows might be different to your friend's version of Windows. This splintering effect is what Microsoft wants to avoid, because at the moment the only saving grace of Windows is that it's homogenous. Linux allows customisation in droves and that's partially why Linux is harder to configure and maintain. That's the tradeoff.
The GUI was, I believe, developed at PARC, under Xerox, along with the mouse, etc. Apple basically stole the whole idea from them.
The mouse was developed by Doug Englebart at Stanford Research Institute more than a decade before PARC came into existence.
Apple paid a lot of money to license PARC's technologies. Apple also hired several ex-PARC employees. Apple also heavily improved on PARC's ideas; it certainly wasn't the case that Apple simply "stole" the Star. And it certainly was NOT the case that the Star was the first GUI or even mouse-driven GUI. Apple added a hell of a lot of innovations to the technologies they licensed from Xerox. It was Microsoft who shamefully stole the MacOS interface without paying fees. Read folklore.org to hear the story straight from the horse's mouth.
As the saying goes: Microsoft has a brilliant Research and Development team, and they're called Apple. It's disgusting how little Microsoft adds to the industry, given their size and wealth.
If you want to learn more, read _Insanely Great_ by Steven Levy. It's an excellent book (I just finished reading it today), and very educational.
You might want to read it again. From memory, Levy didn't do such a hatchet job on the history.
The basic premise is this: in exchange for the rights to license AppleBASIC from Microsoft, some pinhead (who had been tasked with the deal because Jobs didn't think the Apple II had a future) gave the software company full rights to the Macintosh look and feel. Viola!
If you spell that word wrong again, I'll express my anger with violins.
A portion of/.izens use iBooks/Powerbooks with Linux on them.
Yup, I'm one of them.
Why? Because Apple's laptops are a nice piece of hardware.
Damn right. Sleek clean lines. Good build construction. Very small. Very light. Long battery life. Everything built-in (Firewire, Bluetooth, 802.11, USB2, Ethernet, DVI), slot loading drive, excellent screen quality. Runs Linux like a charm; almost all the bits are properly supported. CPU is a little gutless but it's more than enough for basics like web browsing, e-mail, office, and quake.
Yes, it was a little more expensive than an equivalent PC notebook. But the PC notebooks are just ugly.
They have decent, if not overwhelming performance stats, they automatically go to sleep when you close the lid,
Yeah, well I don't get sleep on mine, and the video card is nvidia so I don't get 3D either, but apart from that I'm a happy camper.
It's great that Sun has GPL'ed this desktop, but it has absolutely zero chance of mainstream Linux adoption. Why? Because it requires Java to run, and the Java environment itself is not open source. Remember the whole KDE debacle about Qt not being free enough? Multiply that by a few million times and you'll see why Looking Glass won't make it past "gee, that's cool" in the Linux world.
Ok, 2 points to consider.
When KDE was released it was fully GPL but the underlying widget set QT was not "free as in RMS". Did this hinder KDE becoming mainstream? Hell no! Even before the QT was GPLd, KDE was very popular and mainstream (at least in Linux circles). After some time, Trolltech decided to release QT under the GPL and even RMS was happy. I foresee similar futures for Looking Glass and Sun's J2SE.
Second point, Java *from Sun* is not "free as in RMS". It is "free as in beer". It is also "free as in specification". The specification explicitly allows *anybody* to reimplement Java and even get the Java nametag (as long as you pass the testing) and even grants you ROYALTY-FREE USAGE of any Sun patents used in Java. There are several "free as in RMS" implementations of Java. I have no doubt they are not as good as Sun's, but how long will it take somebody to hack something like GCJ just enough to run Looking Glass? I'll wager less than a week. Especially considering that Java3D is now open source... anybody spotting the pattern yet?
Sun's obviously committed to Open Source. They have made the same realisation that IBM did; there is no future in proprietary software for desktops. Release it all for "free as in RMS", collaborate with your competitors *and* your customers, and make your profits from professional services and hardware. That's my opinion, anyway.
Regarding open source alternatives to Lexis-Nexis et. al., I think that we're starting to see the emergence of these sources with the Groklaw [groklaw.net] project. Groklaw right now is confined to a narrow issue, but it publishes primary source material and commentary that is superior to many paid services, and in an open source fashion. It is only possible for Groklaw to do this, however, by focusing on a single issue.
The problem is that Groklaw is just as biased as those other sources you mention. It presents "facts" too, but with such one-sided bias that it isn't a convincing source. It might be factual, but is it truthful?
Now in Groklaw's case I happen to agree with what's being said. I support everything they say. But I recognise that's only because I want Groklaw to be right. I think they are right and I want them to be right, so I can spot the conflict of interest right away. That fills me with doubt; what if I'm passively ignoring facts that support SCO because Groklaw keeps telling me what I want to hear?
I'm starting to understand why people dislike Moore. I happen to like his films and I think the "Moore is wrong" crowd are twits. But I'm starting to see that his bias is what turns people off. He might give us the facts, but how can I make an informed decision if all I see is his bias? Is the idea of democracy to hear biased opinions from such extremes as Moore and Limbaugh and try and guess where the truth is in the middle?
That said, I still think Moore tells the truth and Limbaugh tells lies, and I fully recognise that demonstrates my own bias. I'm hoping that's just a sign I'm one step closer to becoming fair and unbiased.
There's a difference. Paying to see a movie is just that: paying to see something. In other words, when you go to a movie theater, you're paying for a service
By contrast, when you pay to buy a movie [i.e. on DVD], you're paying to own a copy of something. In other words, when you buy a DVD [or parallel product, i.e. CD] you're paying for a good.
What you say is true, but it's not the reason why I buy DVDs.
I buy DVDs so I can watch a movie at any time. Theatres are in an inconvenient location, often at inconvenient times. DVDs I can watch at home, when I feel like it, I can pause halfway, watch the rest tomorrow, etc.
If Video On Demand can offer the same level of convenience then I won't care that it's a service. I'll almost certainly purchase a VOD service instead of physical DVD media. Though the VOD offerings I've tried simply weren't that convenient.
The expensive all-encompassing toolchains ('Professional Services' I think you called it) are monstrously expensive, i.e. a full development suite for Solaris.
You have no idea what professional services are.
Educate yourself before participating in this conversation again.
Slashdot Mirror
You accuse Slashdot of being "behind the curve" but don't get too uppity. The "research" on Groklaw is always post event and mostly consists of repetition and highlighting of what the real protagonists - the lawyers - have already argued days or even weeks before.
Groklaw is little more than a news site with a very limited scope. Useful to us, because we can stay informed, but don't big note its role. The commentary does not and will not have significant bearing on the outcome. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
Oh, I've got a better history.
1993: Doom released
1 month later I go broke buying a 486
1994: Doom II released
1 month later I go broke buying a better 486
1996: Quake released
1 month later I go broke buying a Pentium
1997: Quake II released
1 month later I go broke buying a Pentium MMX
1999: Quake III released
1 month later I go broke buying a Celeron
id Software is the bane of my existence. Curse you Carmack!
I'm running Debian/unstable on a 12" G4 Powerbook. It's pretty good but there are some issues.
You will need the latest Linux kernel. I'm running 2.6.7. A few months ago you would have needed the benh kernel but all the stuff you need has now been rolled back into the Linus kernel.
Even with the latest kernel you will not get full support from your hardware. Here are the big issues:
All the other hardware works well. DVD, CDRW, USB2, Firewire, audio, Ethernet, CPU scaling, etc.
Debian packages everything you need but doesn't configure anything the way you want it. So the initial configuration time is quite significant. I took 2-3 weeks to fix all the annoying problems (eg, the trackpad would trigger a mouse click when I tapped it with my thumb; fixed that with the trackpad program).
I recommend installing the powerpc-utils, pmud-utils, and powernowd packages. You should also enable dev/mac_hid/mouse_button_emulation and vm/laptop_mode.
I know a lot of people with similar G4 laptops (12" or 17", nobody with 15" for some reason). They all think I'm mad for running Linux. But I like Linux. I tried MacOSX and despite being a UNIX-like OS and supposedly the "greatest GUI in existence", I just didn't like it as much as Debian and GNOME. If the sleep worked I'd be ecstatic. I'm sometimes tempted to switch to MacOSX just for sleep support but I've never been annoyed enough to switch.
You know, that'd be a great name for a rock and roll band.
Don't you mean Victory Fries.
Bloody Americans.
I don't know what Actionscript is but vim (my preferred editor) has syntax highlighting and folding. For example, here's a dummy program in C.
Turn on syntax highlighting with ":syntax on". From anywhere inside the main function enter "zfap" to fold the function.
On top of that line, enter "zo" to open the fold or "zc" to close the fold.
I know EMACS has syntax highlighting too and I'd be surprised if it didn't have folding.
Ok, that's great. You've identified your primary reason for switching to Linux is security and your secondary reason is that Windows requires too much maintenance.
I don't think any Linux distribution will ease your maintenance woes. Although I find Linux a lot easier to maintain than Windows I know this isn't the case for the majority of users. You should definitely avoid the high-maintenance and high-experience distributions like Debian and Gentoo (disclaimer: I personally use Debian).
Regarding security, any distribution that regularly updates their packages in response to (or preempts) CERT advisories would be fine. You don't want to get into secure distributions like Smoothwall; they will not give you a good desktop experience. Nor do you want to use Linux distros like Knoppix that don't have a formal mechanism for deliving security updates.
I think a paid and supported version of SuSe, Mandrake or RedHat would be your best bet. They offer the best balance between ease-of-use, ease-of-administration, cutting edge features, and automated security updates.
Don't kid yourself that Linux is "better". It is different. For some jobs it can be better. For some jobs it can be worse.
I'm being serious. You state your requirements up front:
You are a Windows client developer and you need Windows for testing ergo you should run Windows as your desktop. If you have other unstated reasons for wanting to switch to Linux then I suggest you tell us what they are. We can't just guess at why you want to run Linux.
Remember that you can run Linux in emulation on Windows too. Either in Virtual PC, VMware (I know VMware isn't really emulation), or even the free QEMU these days. So any desire to have the "server software" on your laptop shouldn't be a deciding reason to switch to a Linux desktop.
Couple of points.
I'd be fine with it if Linux growth stops right now. It's a good size, there's a high percentage of developers, we wield enough buying power to get the attention of many hardware manufacturers, we have mountains of software, etc. Sure, I wouldn't mind if Linux achieves "World Domination", but I wouldn't compromise the benefits of Linux (like no licensing hassles) in order to increase the size. As RMS loves to say, be wary of companies bearing gifts who merely ask that you relinquish a little freedom in exchange. It's a Faustian bargain.
I agree that closed-source applications can be a good thing but only when they add value. I don't see a closed-source DVD player as being particularly useful to modern Linux distributions. I've been using Totem for ages and it works fine, including menus, and Totem integrates nicely with the GNOME desktop. PowerDVD isn't even a decent player (I've used it on Windows and it sucked) so why would I care about PowerDVD on Linux?
Final point. Apparently software patents and the DMCA makes it illegal to use DVD players like Totem but legal to use PowerDVD. That just shits me. My software choices being dictated by some pathetic USPTO decision. I'd rather not play DVDs at all.
I disagree. Software piracy I'll agree is 100% wrong. Software patents on the other hand are an abomination in computing.
Boo fucking hoo. So did many of the rest of us. But that doesn't mean we all agree with you that software patents are a good thing.
I'm hoping the first one. The second one conveys no information about the transmission other than it used RF. What is the computer doing? What does the sensor measure? What happens to the data? Hopefully you had a third student who wrote:
The first student needs a smack in the head for that run-on sentence but the second student is a lousy engineer. If they can't describe the situation more precisely than "communicates with RF" in a written report then I wouldn't want them anywhere near my team.
You are fucking stupid if you think I said that OSX users are all fucking stupid.
The kernel in MacOS X is a hybrid between Mach and BSD, primarily FreeBSD. This is well documented.
So unless you think the Apple website is wrong and they don't really use FreeBSD in their kernel, despite their own developer's website saying that they do, I think you might be mistaken.
Less than half a dozen? Solaris 8 shipped with an entire CD full of free software; the Companion CD. It was out in at least 2001. There's a manifest on the sunfreeware website. It's 130 packages.
I see. So OpenOffice doesn't count as a contribution to the open source movement because the company they bought the code from was failing.
You're an idiot. Go away.
By what measurement?
By lines of code? How many lines of code are in OpenOffice anyway?
By the number of kernel improvements to Linux? I don't recall seeing Apple's name on RCU.
How about marketing dollars? I'm pretty sure IBM is just beating HP for that title.
By legitimizing OSS in the corporate world? Pretty sure IBM wins that one. Heck, OSX users probably don't even know they're using OSS.
Or how about units of OSS software shipped? I am pretty sure Sun wins again; OSS and GNU has been bundled with Solaris for years and Sun ships a lot of boxes.
By their contributions to the BSDs? Apple uses FreeBSD a lot but it's only a trickle back. Sure, they give some gnawed bones to the FreeBSD kernel guys, but what about the rest of BSD?
Are you measuring all the boring stuff like documentation and testing and selling? Because I think Sun and IBM both beat Apple there too.
Hell, what metric are you using to convince yourself that Apple has "given a lot more" than IBM or Sun? I'm really interested to know. I realise that Apple uses a lot of open source software and they are responsible for a lot of FreeBSD-based desktops and servers, but using software isn't the same thing as giving.
My own personal list of companies who have given the most to OSS (in no particular order):
I'd rank Apple somewhere in the top 10 but they're playing well behind those 3. I reckon Apple probably ranks below Novell, SGI, HP and fricking Intel in terms of contributions to the open source movement. I certainly would not place them in first place. They're a good contributor, and they have given a lot, but have they given the most? No way!
Yes, because when somebody says "Outlook" I immediately think of an e-mail client, and the name "Excel" practically screams "I'm a spreadsheet".
Sure, but IBM and HP and Dell don't have to be so careful. They can ship whatever applications they damn well feel like.
The reality is that Linux doesn't ship with all the application software. Go to www.kernel.org and you can see Linux ships with no application software. The distributions bundle Linux with the application software. There are dozens of distributions who all offer different application bundles. That's how it should be.
Similarly the OEMs pick and choose what they bundle with Windows. The previous IBM notebook I bought had third party fax software, photo editing software, etc. Dell had a different bundle. HP had a different bundle again. The local whitebox store bundles 1,000 shareware games. This is also how it should be.
Microsoft got in trouble a few years ago because they informed all the OEMs that they must ship Microsoft's web browser in order to receive bulk discounts on Microsoft's operating system. Some OEMs wanted to ship Netscape's web browser but Microsoft put a stop to that through economic force. That's illegal because it is anti-competitive.
The article gets it wrong. It claims that Linux gets away with it because there are multiple IRC clients in every Linux distribution. That's not the reason. The OEMs could bundle an IRC client with Windows if they wanted to but there are high support costs associated with bundling an application. Every application in an OEM bundle must have a "wizard" for their help desk and that costs money. If the OEM doesn't think that the increased revenue from bundling an IRC client would outweigh the associated costs then the OEM simply won't bundle it. The Linux distributions don't offer the same level of support, so there's no reason for them not to bundle an IRC client. Indeed, there's no reason for them not to bundle ALL the IRC clients. The proof of this argument is in the newer distributions like Linspire. They offer greater levels of support but they don't bundle as many applications. I predict that as distributions become more focussed they will lose the variety, or at least relegate the variety to "supplemental" discs.
Microsoft could solve this problem (if indeed it is a problem) the same way Linux does: allow third parties to produce customised builds of Windows. Unfortunately his means your version of Windows might be different to your friend's version of Windows. This splintering effect is what Microsoft wants to avoid, because at the moment the only saving grace of Windows is that it's homogenous. Linux allows customisation in droves and that's partially why Linux is harder to configure and maintain. That's the tradeoff.
It's an interesting phenomenon on Slashdot that merely mentioning a mod often receives that mod. I've seen it happen several times before.
The mouse was developed by Doug Englebart at Stanford Research Institute more than a decade before PARC came into existence.
Apple paid a lot of money to license PARC's technologies. Apple also hired several ex-PARC employees. Apple also heavily improved on PARC's ideas; it certainly wasn't the case that Apple simply "stole" the Star. And it certainly was NOT the case that the Star was the first GUI or even mouse-driven GUI. Apple added a hell of a lot of innovations to the technologies they licensed from Xerox. It was Microsoft who shamefully stole the MacOS interface without paying fees. Read folklore.org to hear the story straight from the horse's mouth.
As the saying goes: Microsoft has a brilliant Research and Development team, and they're called Apple. It's disgusting how little Microsoft adds to the industry, given their size and wealth.
You might want to read it again. From memory, Levy didn't do such a hatchet job on the history.
If you spell that word wrong again, I'll express my anger with violins.
Yup, I'm one of them.
Damn right. Sleek clean lines. Good build construction. Very small. Very light. Long battery life. Everything built-in (Firewire, Bluetooth, 802.11, USB2, Ethernet, DVI), slot loading drive, excellent screen quality. Runs Linux like a charm; almost all the bits are properly supported. CPU is a little gutless but it's more than enough for basics like web browsing, e-mail, office, and quake.
Yes, it was a little more expensive than an equivalent PC notebook. But the PC notebooks are just ugly.
Yeah, well I don't get sleep on mine, and the video card is nvidia so I don't get 3D either, but apart from that I'm a happy camper.
Ok, 2 points to consider.
When KDE was released it was fully GPL but the underlying widget set QT was not "free as in RMS". Did this hinder KDE becoming mainstream? Hell no! Even before the QT was GPLd, KDE was very popular and mainstream (at least in Linux circles). After some time, Trolltech decided to release QT under the GPL and even RMS was happy. I foresee similar futures for Looking Glass and Sun's J2SE.
Second point, Java *from Sun* is not "free as in RMS". It is "free as in beer". It is also "free as in specification". The specification explicitly allows *anybody* to reimplement Java and even get the Java nametag (as long as you pass the testing) and even grants you ROYALTY-FREE USAGE of any Sun patents used in Java. There are several "free as in RMS" implementations of Java. I have no doubt they are not as good as Sun's, but how long will it take somebody to hack something like GCJ just enough to run Looking Glass? I'll wager less than a week. Especially considering that Java3D is now open source... anybody spotting the pattern yet?
Sun's obviously committed to Open Source. They have made the same realisation that IBM did; there is no future in proprietary software for desktops. Release it all for "free as in RMS", collaborate with your competitors *and* your customers, and make your profits from professional services and hardware. That's my opinion, anyway.
The problem is that Groklaw is just as biased as those other sources you mention. It presents "facts" too, but with such one-sided bias that it isn't a convincing source. It might be factual, but is it truthful?
Now in Groklaw's case I happen to agree with what's being said. I support everything they say. But I recognise that's only because I want Groklaw to be right. I think they are right and I want them to be right, so I can spot the conflict of interest right away. That fills me with doubt; what if I'm passively ignoring facts that support SCO because Groklaw keeps telling me what I want to hear?
I'm starting to understand why people dislike Moore. I happen to like his films and I think the "Moore is wrong" crowd are twits. But I'm starting to see that his bias is what turns people off. He might give us the facts, but how can I make an informed decision if all I see is his bias? Is the idea of democracy to hear biased opinions from such extremes as Moore and Limbaugh and try and guess where the truth is in the middle?
That said, I still think Moore tells the truth and Limbaugh tells lies, and I fully recognise that demonstrates my own bias. I'm hoping that's just a sign I'm one step closer to becoming fair and unbiased.
I have come to the conclusion that the groups who profess the loudest are trying to convince themselves moreso than anybody else.
For example, Christians who proclaim love yet murder abortion doctors and scream profanities at gay couples. Who are they trying to convince?
That Americans spend so much time trying to convince the rest of the world that the USA is the "Land of the Free" makes me very suspicious.
What you say is true, but it's not the reason why I buy DVDs.
I buy DVDs so I can watch a movie at any time. Theatres are in an inconvenient location, often at inconvenient times. DVDs I can watch at home, when I feel like it, I can pause halfway, watch the rest tomorrow, etc.
If Video On Demand can offer the same level of convenience then I won't care that it's a service. I'll almost certainly purchase a VOD service instead of physical DVD media. Though the VOD offerings I've tried simply weren't that convenient.
You have no idea what professional services are.
Educate yourself before participating in this conversation again.