I suppose we will have to disagree here; I've always liked menus in that style (same as Afterstep, etc.). There's an old joke that says:
You: Come here Dog: OK, arf arf drool
You: Come here Cat: Why should I come over there? Why don't YOU come over HERE?
I feel like the menu should always be right under my fingertips, and I shouldn't have to move up to the top of the screen, where some designer decided the menu should be. Also, as others have pointed out, you can float the menus (I hadn't heard of that one before, but I mostly do audio; it's cool though).
They can charge you money for the software because they know you will pay for it, just like you will pay for your OS. You have no choice (or that's what you believe), and you'll do it. It's the same reason that DVDs cost more here than they do in India.
Also, to address your theme of "dying or no-loss companies" (which you posted yesterday, too), there are a lot of places that are very big on IRIX and SGI hardware (my Uni. is one of those places). I don't think that SGI is truly about to get flushed. And OF COURSE most of the companies are not risking anything big on Linux at the moment; it's new, and it's got a philosophy behind it which is strange and unusual to them, something they couldn't have imagined a few years ago. Not long ago, almost no companies were doing anything...so give it time.
Lastly, I don't really care about a "business model". Would it be nice to have all the applications for Linux that we do for Windows? Well, sort of...I wouldn't mind the audio stuff ported over, but as it stands, I can _right_now_ use GPLd software for almost all of my needs. Sure, I'd like to not ever have to worry about doing Windows tech. support any more, but thanks to the nature of GNU, I'll always go home to a great OS, whether RedHat exists tomorrow or not.
If you want proof that OSS will eventually overcome, I point to SCO as an example. Today, if you wanted a UNIX to run on x86 hardware, what would you use? Linux or *BSD, I think.
1. The top one has got to be that I can't do standard *NIX middle-button-paste with Mozilla. I actually have to highlight text, then select "Copy", and then I can middle-button-paste. This is quite annoying...I don't want to use "Copy", that's one of the reasons I don't like Windows or MacOS.
2. Almost as annoying is the fact that the middle button is no longer set to "Open link in new window". Again, that's one of the things I like about Netscape under Linux.
3. I want to be able to define my own shortcut keys, because I will almost certainly never agree with the ones anyone else chooses.
Whenever I use netscape, I have the buttons not shown. Why? Because they're way too large! Even at 1024x768, they take up what I consider to be an unacceptable amount of my viewing area. IMO, Mozilla definitely did the right thing by making smaller buttons, and putting them on the same plane as the URL.
As for the interface in general, I also like that better than Netscape (I'll not mention IE, which is truly hideous).
It's true that there are some silly things, like the 2 you mentioned. However, there are many distros which have a good reason to be separate. Linux for embedded systems should not be the same as Linux for desktops/servers. Also, I like the fact that there are separate distros of Linux; I would not, for example, appreciate it if Debian "merged" with one of the RPM-based distros. Yes, there are some differences in file structure, etc., but there are far more similarities; just stay away from those silly GUI tools and use the cross-platform configuration tool called "vi":)
As far as kernel mods go, there are good reasons not to include many of them. Do most people want to use Mosix? No, probably not (though I am using it, and it's cool). So, it's a patch. This keeps the kernel source from getting even more insane than it already is.
I think that both of these are Good Things. Silly things like ABIT Linux will likely die out rather quickly, IMO. It's also my opinion that Linux can't truly fragment because of the nature of the GPL.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against *BSD (though I'll probably not try it, because I really like SysV). But there's no need for people to make snide remarks (the one in the interview to which the original post was referring)...use what works for you.
We've been using Debian potato on our servers for months now with no problems (they broke X forwarding for a day or so this week, but that's not really horrible). I definitely don't use slink on anything anymore...potato has been done as far as I'm concerned.
First, I don't think that "everybody expects" what you think they do...I certainly don't.
Also, what would you have it do if there are multiple partitions on the drive? And they are different filesystems? Symbolic links...I suppose then we must have a/dev/sda1 and a/dev/sda2 and so on into infinity, "just in case" I have something as that device with n partitions? Plus, then we must throw away this wonderful new invention, devfs, since if we are going to use symlinks and have every single possible device magically mounted for us, we certainly can't have/dev only listing the devices that are in use at the time.
If you want the behaviour of the OS syncing the disk before it is ejected, you must:
A: use a syncronous filesystem, sacrificing speed. B: replace PC floppies with something like Mac floppies. PC floppy hardware can NOT do that, unless you want to do A (I don't).
Lastly, please explain how I can do the following using your symlink theory; I'm very interested:
mount -t nfs foo.umbc.edu:/usr/local/usr/local smbmount//bar.umbc.edu/public/samba -o username autechre
I have a server which is doing 3, soon to be 5 virtual domains. Apache configuration is simple. Sendmail was also very easy to configure. All you need to do is this:
1. Have support for a sendmail.cw file, so that it will accept mail for all the hostnames. Put the hostnames in that file:)
2. Add in support for virtusertable, which is similar to/etc/mail/aliases, but a bit different. This allows you to redirect, say, webmaster@host1 to a different place than webmaster@host2, redirect all mail for 1 domain to one place, etc.
I have the O'Reilly book, but I didn't actually need it; I found all the info I needed on www.sendmail.org. It took about 1/2 hour. In case you're wondering, I'm a college student who's been using Linux for about 2 years, not a 60-year-old UNIX guru.
> all filesystems mounted on any node appear to all others...
Now that's cool:) Got me there.
> Context Dependent Symbolic Links
OK, don't think we have that now, but it doesn't sound incredibly hard to do...
> Install the OS once and the cluster software once...
Put an NFS server on one of the nodes, serving "/". When you get a new client, fire it up with Tom's rootboot, fdisk the new disk, mount the local drive and the NFS share, and cp -afr. Adjust/etc/init.d/network, chroot, LILO, reboot.
> Install any application once, all members can run it
As long as you have a shared/usr or/opt or whatever, that's pretty much implied (so long as all nodes are running the same kernel, C libraries, etc...which they really would be).
> Cluster member numbers...
It sounds like Mosix may be doing something along these lines, but I admit that I'm not entirely certain (yet). I'm also not certain about that last thing you mentioned (DLM), I just wanted to point out that some of these are doable today with Linux (some, like Coda, are not "finished"...but what ever is?:)
Mosix is a clustering technology which is more similar to--yes, your favorite--Beowulf. Except that Mosix is basically, as my friend puts it, "SMP Writ Large":) The people who maintain Mosix call it a "fork and forget" cluster, because basically what it does is to distribute processes between nodes. It's not as special-purpose as Beowulf, and doesn't need to have things specially coded/compiled for it to work (of course, Beowulf will likely get better performance, IF you take the time to tailor your app to it, and if your app was "embarassingly parallel" to begin with).
This is more of a failover technology, e.g. it's not really a "cluster" in the sense you're thinking. It's more than 1 machine, yes, but they're there to provide high availability. Basically, if one machine goes down, another will take over for it.
You can get something similar by going here:
http://linuxvirtualserver.org
They have patches and instructions for setting up a nifty webserver HA cluster, which makes use of apps like mon, heartbeat, and fake (at least 2 of which are Debian packages, which makes my life easier:)
I'm now building a cluster out of low-end machines, and I'm going to try to run both Mosix AND VirtualServer:) Maybe I'll try this SGI thing when it comes out, too; can't look bad on a resume...
Many negative effects have been linked to the consumption of dairy products. My mother and brother would both get ear infections during the winter, but not if they stopped drinking milk.
Calcium is useless if you are not able to absorb it. Humans don't need more calcium, they need the magnesium to be able to make use of the calcium.
We are the only species that drinks the milk of another species (no, ants+aphids don't count), and we are the only ones that are never weaned away from it.
Also, tryptophan is NOT found only in milk. Bananas are one example of a tasty fruit product with tryptophan; there are many others, but those can be readily found in books, so I will not list them here.
There have also been studies showing a link between blood type and diet. Such studies find that I, with my type ARh- blood, cannot process animal proteins effectively, and that it is natural for me to become a vegetarian. Since (mostly) eliminating animal sources and caffeine from my diet, I have had far more energy, a better mood, and lost weight, despite no other lifestyle changes. I am not "on a diet", I "have a diet"...I still eat large quantities of food, it's just mostly carbohydrates and vegetables.
It is true that SOME people are not "made" to be vegetarians. My mother feels very faint after about 2 weeks of vegetarianism, so it is not the right choice for her. However, it has done good things for me, and I have no interest in going back. It actually began when I noticed that the digestion of animal products was hard on me when I was ill, but if I stuck to beans/pasta/etc., I was fine. I concluded that it probably wasn't so great for me even when I WASN'T sick...my vegetarianism (and near-veganism) is almost entirely dietary, and has little to do with cute, fuzzy animals.
I strongly suggest that you take care in what you express to be factual. There is not one "right" diet for all human beings, and any attempt to make such sweeping statements is doomed. Yes, your friend may have had a "scientifically balanced diet", but obviously it was not balanced FOR HER. "Modern medicine" still does not really understand the human body.
It should be "==old news" if you are assuming C, C++, etc. as the language. However, in Pascal, "=" is equivalent, and ":=" is assignment. I sometimes _really_ wish that this were also the case in C...
I'm sure people who are older/more of programmers than I can point out some other fun examples...
> 1. why do i get the feeling that linux is hard to install?
Probably because you haven't tried yet. You might think it's hard to waterski if you've never done it, but it really isn't:)
> 2. I have an old compaq I want to put it on?
Yes.:)
> 3. Know of any good newbie sites?
Your local LUG. If you don't have one, then borrow MY local LUG, which is very good: linux.umbc.edu. If you want to do something, go to the LDP before asking for help; there are lots of HOWTOs and Mini-HOWTOs on many useful things.
Install Debian, and use a graphical package manager, such as aptitude, which will display zillions of packages with descriptions. Install the ones that sound like you might like them.
The package name for this is console-apt. It's a colorful, curses front-end to apt, and it ROCKS MY WORLD.
There is also gnome-apt, which is a really nice interface, though you need to run X to use it (so I prefer capt for servers).
I personally think dselect is a piece of junk, and that's what kept me away from Debian at first (my first Debian install was on a 68k Mac--talk about an unfair experience on which to judge a distro!:) I was happy when I found apt, but I still didn't have a way to figure out the name of the package I wanted to apt-get, save firing up a web browser and doing a search.
Capt was sadly removed to potato due to some bugs that were (IMO unfairly) classified as release-critical. If you can't find it, email me and I'll make a.deb for you (assuming you're using potato).
RPM users do have an apt-get-like program now; it was put up on Freshmeat recently. However, rpmfind is not quite apt-get; all rpmfind does is to check the ftp sites for updated packages (by default, it does this each night via a cron job). It cannot handle dependencies, and is not really a tool for installing new packages; it's for keeping your system up to date. I use it on 3 workstations that are still RedHat (on an X-terminal, who cares?). It works.
I suppose I should have clarified the capt thing; I have read the reason they gave for removing it, but I completely disagree with them. Firstly, in using it approximately 8 bazillion times, it has sig-11'd twice (the described bug). Second, they LEFT IN aptitude, which DOESN'T EVEN WORK!! Grrr...I was very surprised/displeased when it vanished; I had to rebuild the.deb from an existing install and *gasp* actually have a.deb file on my hard disk:)
I was a RedHat user for about a year. Now I use Debian. I'll try my best to explain the differences as I see them.
One important thing to remember is that while the Debian package system is dpkg, most people use (and praise) apt, which is a front-end of sorts. Oh, and Debian can also use RPM packages; I'm not sure if RPM-based distros can use.debs.
1. Dependencies: RedHat packages depend on files. Debian packages depend on other packages. The advantage of this for RPM is that you can install packages, if you've compiled the libs yourself (eg, OpenSSL w/ RSA), though you can simply force Debian to install the package anyway. The advantage of apt is that it can say, "You need these other 3 packages to use this one. Want me to get them and install them for you?"
2. Getting packages: With RedHat, you go and download your packages, and install them. With apt, you provide it with a list of FTP sites, and what categories of packages you wish to use from those sites (including which version of Debian). You tell it:
"apt-get install foo"
and it checks the FTP sites for foo, does the aforementioned dependency magik, installs it, and cleans up after itself. Oh, and it has you configure the package AS YOU INSTALL IT, which I see as a big plus. With a graphical apt interface such as capt (ncurses), you can browse the list of available files in a nice colorful interface.
3. Upgrading packages: When you upgrade a package, you don't want to overwrite the config files. RPMs either keep your config. files, or move yours to a "config.something", and use theirs. Regardless, they do what they will. Apt asks YOU what YOU think ought to be done:
use the new one keep your current one(default) show the differences
If you keep your current one, it saves the new one as "config.dpkg-install", just in case you change your mind later.
4. Upgrading the system: With RedHat (maybe *RPM?), you reboot the system with the CD/disk of the new OS version, and use the "upgrade" option. I've heard mixed results. With apt, you edit the ftp sources file and change the Debian version (from "slink" or "stable" to "potato", for example). You then do: apt-get update (refreshes your package list) apt-get dist-upgrade
In my experience, this has always smoothly upgraded a system. Notice that rebooting is not involved; this is done while things are running, and it suggests at the end that certain services be restarted, and offers to do this for you.
I hope this helps; I can't think of anything else right now. Personally? I've found apt a lot more "pleasant" to use than RPM, which is why I made the switch. Oh, there is one last thing, which is less a difference in distros than philosophy:
RedHat install: Select your packages. Install them. Reboot and enjoy. Debian install: Install base system, configuring networking and kernel modules. Reboot. Using your new minimal system, install the packages you need.
OK, one last LAST thing:) If you try Debian, don't use dselect. This is my opinion of course, but I think it's a horrible piece of junk. After the base install and reboot, immediatly quit dselect and use apt instead. Sadly, they've removed capt from potato (I can't figure out why), so you will have to try to find this wonderfull tool (I can give you a.deb of it, if you want).
OK, someone else already pointed out vi, and the fact that bash beats the heck out of command.com. Here are a few more obvious examples:
1. Telnet: I use mutt, and vim. When will MS get a terminal program that actually displays color? Or works reliably with backspace?
2. FTP: if nothing else, at least the command-line ftp tool defaults to "binary"...
3. The whole UI: sorry, but AfterStep is about a zillion times better than WindowsUI. It just makes a lot more sense. Or with KDE (for those that want something "closer to Windows"), I can set up nice big buttons on the panel for the apps people use the most. This is a lot better than the Win98 tiny icons next to the Start Menu. Just because people are used to Win9x interfaces doesn't make them better. Why do most artistic people like Macs? WindowsUI == YUCK.
And I don't really want to get into discussions about the underlying OS (symbolic links compared to "shortcuts"?)
Thanks to you and others who have pointed this out, I've got it now and will be trying it shortly (though I use Mozilla now, not Netscape, so I wonder if I will still be able to get it to work)
What I'd really like to see is for Mozilla to support this right off the bat...make it an application type just like MP3s or AVIs, where you can simply go into Preferences and choose your program.
It says so on their page. There's a good reason, of course, and that's the RSA patent...right now SSL technology is proprietary in the US, and so can't really be included with something like Mozilla.
I'm sure, however, that Netscape 5 or 6 or 2001 or whatever it is will still have SSL in it, but don't expect SSL in Mozilla until after September.
As for me, I've been using Mozilla for everything under Linux except SSL stuff, and I'm much happier with it than Netscape. I only want 3 things:
1. Let me use button 2 as "open in new window"...that's what makes Netscape better under Linux than under Windows, 3 buttons. 2. Let me do UNIX pasting! I can paste something _to_ mozilla with "highlight, button 2", but not _from_ mozilla. I REFUSE to submit to the Windows retardation of "copy and paste". Don't be StarOffice! 3. Let me define my own text shortcuts (the first thing I would do is to set hjkl to be motion keys:)
Odd that you should mention mozilla not working with Hotmail (I can't comment on that, because web mail is horrifying to me, so I haven't tried). You may appreciate the irony that where I work, people have to use Netscape to check their Hotmail account. Why? Because IE has so many security holes, it forces us to disable ActiveScripting, and so it doesn't work with Hotmail.
Also, if you have less than 24 MB of RAM, what other graphical browser will run decently? Netscape? Not really. IE? No, you need to run Windows, and I consider running Windows with less than 64M painful, and with less than 32M as crazy.
Of course, you could always use w3m, if you're so concerned about RAM...and w3m doesn't have anything integrated, either:)
Well, they're playing the version numbers game, which will look good for everyone who doesn't know any better. (insert same reasons given by Slackware here...)
As for AIM being integrated, that is not at all surprising; it was already pretty much forcibly bundled with the previous version of Netscape (under Windows, anyway; even if you told it "No, I don't want anything to do with AIM, go away", it would prompt you AGAIN every so often, and the option would always be there in the menu system. Now that I'm not using Windows, I don't have to think about that:) Since AOL controls ICQ as well, it would be interesting to see one of the "universal IM" clients integrated instead. Also, why not integrate WinAmp?
To now contradict myself, anothing thing I'd really like to see is some modularity. I will NEVER user the mail client (mutt), news reader (don't), or HTML editor (vim), and I'd like Netscape to give me the option, as w3m does, of launching mutt for mailto: tags.
I think that virtual servers count just as much as separate machines. If they're using IP aliasing, then it's almost the same as _having_ separate machines (there are a few differences, but to a web browser, they're not apparent). I know of at least one web hosting place that has 11 different clients' webservers running on one machine...I would think that this certainly counts as not simply one server.
Besides, there are probably many small organizations (like mine) which didn't buy Linux, but instead downloaded it (I don't need phone support, I have a LUG!) I have 4 servers running Linux, and one of those servers has 3 aliases (so by my counting, that's 7 servers). Servers like these were not counted at all in these statistics.
I doubt that Linux verdors charge extra for people using IP aliasing, but I'm betting that if NT has a similar feature (does it?), there's licensing fees to be paid for using it. So, I would say that the Linux numbers are DEFLATED, for the factors of freeness and aliases.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose we will have to disagree here; I've always liked menus in that style (same as Afterstep, etc.). There's an old joke that says:
You: Come here
Dog: OK, arf arf drool
You: Come here
Cat: Why should I come over there? Why don't YOU come over HERE?
I feel like the menu should always be right under my fingertips, and I shouldn't have to move up to the top of the screen, where some designer decided the menu should be. Also, as others have pointed out, you can float the menus (I hadn't heard of that one before, but I mostly do audio; it's cool though).
They can charge you money for the software because they know you will pay for it, just like you will pay for your OS. You have no choice (or that's what you believe), and you'll do it. It's the same reason that DVDs cost more here than they do in India.
Also, to address your theme of "dying or no-loss companies" (which you posted yesterday, too), there are a lot of places that are very big on IRIX and SGI hardware (my Uni. is one of those places). I don't think that SGI is truly about to get flushed. And OF COURSE most of the companies are not risking anything big on Linux at the moment; it's new, and it's got a philosophy behind it which is strange and unusual to them, something they couldn't have imagined a few years ago. Not long ago, almost no companies were doing anything...so give it time.
Lastly, I don't really care about a "business model". Would it be nice to have all the applications for Linux that we do for Windows? Well, sort of...I wouldn't mind the audio stuff ported over, but as it stands, I can _right_now_ use GPLd software for almost all of my needs. Sure, I'd like to not ever have to worry about doing Windows tech. support any more, but thanks to the nature of GNU, I'll always go home to a great OS, whether RedHat exists tomorrow or not.
If you want proof that OSS will eventually overcome, I point to SCO as an example. Today, if you wanted a UNIX to run on x86 hardware, what would you use? Linux or *BSD, I think.
1. The top one has got to be that I can't do standard *NIX middle-button-paste with Mozilla. I actually have to highlight text, then select "Copy", and then I can middle-button-paste. This is quite annoying...I don't want to use "Copy", that's one of the reasons I don't like Windows or MacOS.
2. Almost as annoying is the fact that the middle button is no longer set to "Open link in new window". Again, that's one of the things I like about Netscape under Linux.
3. I want to be able to define my own shortcut keys, because I will almost certainly never agree with the ones anyone else chooses.
Whenever I use netscape, I have the buttons not shown. Why? Because they're way too large! Even at 1024x768, they take up what I consider to be an unacceptable amount of my viewing area. IMO, Mozilla definitely did the right thing by making smaller buttons, and putting them on the same plane as the URL.
As for the interface in general, I also like that better than Netscape (I'll not mention IE, which is truly hideous).
However, since it just recently got updated (I think today or yesterday) to M14, it will likely be a short while before they have the crypto version.
:)
Posted using M14 on Debian
It's true that there are some silly things, like the 2 you mentioned. However, there are many distros which have a good reason to be separate. Linux for embedded systems should not be the same as Linux for desktops/servers. Also, I like the fact that there are separate distros of Linux; I would not, for example, appreciate it if Debian "merged" with one of the RPM-based distros. Yes, there are some differences in file structure, etc., but there are far more similarities; just stay away from those silly GUI tools and use the cross-platform configuration tool called "vi" :)
As far as kernel mods go, there are good reasons not to include many of them. Do most people want to use Mosix? No, probably not (though I am using it, and it's cool). So, it's a patch. This keeps the kernel source from getting even more insane than it already is.
I think that both of these are Good Things. Silly things like ABIT Linux will likely die out rather quickly, IMO. It's also my opinion that Linux can't truly fragment because of the nature of the GPL.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against *BSD (though I'll probably not try it, because I really like SysV). But there's no need for people to make snide remarks (the one in the interview to which the original post was referring)...use what works for you.
We've been using Debian potato on our servers for months now with no problems (they broke X forwarding for a day or so this week, but that's not really horrible). I definitely don't use slink on anything anymore...potato has been done as far as I'm concerned.
First, I don't think that "everybody expects" what you think they do...I certainly don't.
/dev/sda1 and a /dev/sda2 and so on into infinity, "just in case" I have something as that device with n partitions? Plus, then we must throw away this wonderful new invention, devfs, since if we are going to use symlinks and have every single possible device magically mounted for us, we certainly can't have /dev only listing the devices that are in use at the time.
/usr/local //bar.umbc.edu/public /samba -o username autechre
Also, what would you have it do if there are multiple partitions on the drive? And they are different filesystems? Symbolic links...I suppose then we must have a
If you want the behaviour of the OS syncing the disk before it is ejected, you must:
A: use a syncronous filesystem, sacrificing speed.
B: replace PC floppies with something like Mac floppies. PC floppy hardware can NOT do that, unless you want to do A (I don't).
Lastly, please explain how I can do the following using your symlink theory; I'm very interested:
mount -t nfs foo.umbc.edu:/usr/local
smbmount
I have a server which is doing 3, soon to be 5 virtual domains. Apache configuration is simple. Sendmail was also very easy to configure. All you need to do is this:
:)
/etc/mail/aliases, but a bit different. This allows you to redirect, say, webmaster@host1 to a different place than webmaster@host2, redirect all mail for 1 domain to one place, etc.
1. Have support for a sendmail.cw file, so that it will accept mail for all the hostnames. Put the hostnames in that file
2. Add in support for virtusertable, which is similar to
I have the O'Reilly book, but I didn't actually need it; I found all the info I needed on www.sendmail.org. It took about 1/2 hour. In case you're wondering, I'm a college student who's been using Linux for about 2 years, not a 60-year-old UNIX guru.
> a cluster "system" disk...common /usr
:) Got me there.
/etc/init.d/network, chroot, LILO, reboot.
/usr or /opt or whatever, that's pretty much implied (so long as all nodes are running the same kernel, C libraries, etc...which they really would be).
:)
You can do this with Coda.
> all filesystems mounted on any node appear to all others...
Now that's cool
> Context Dependent Symbolic Links
OK, don't think we have that now, but it doesn't sound incredibly hard to do...
> Install the OS once and the cluster software once...
Put an NFS server on one of the nodes, serving "/". When you get a new client, fire it up with Tom's rootboot, fdisk the new disk, mount the local drive and the NFS share, and cp -afr. Adjust
> Install any application once, all members can run it
As long as you have a shared
> Cluster member numbers...
It sounds like Mosix may be doing something along these lines, but I admit that I'm not entirely certain (yet). I'm also not certain about that last thing you mentioned (DLM), I just wanted to point out that some of these are doable today with Linux (some, like Coda, are not "finished"...but what ever is?
At least, I hope that was the original intent. Just in case...
...'failing' over... ...'failing over'
It's not:
It's:
As in, "failover". This means the software does what you would expect: in the event of a failure, a working machine takes over for the failed one.
No.
:) The people who maintain Mosix call it a "fork and forget" cluster, because basically what it does is to distribute processes between nodes. It's not as special-purpose as Beowulf, and doesn't need to have things specially coded/compiled for it to work (of course, Beowulf will likely get better performance, IF you take the time to tailor your app to it, and if your app was "embarassingly parallel" to begin with).
:)
:) Maybe I'll try this SGI thing when it comes out, too; can't look bad on a resume...
Mosix is a clustering technology which is more similar to--yes, your favorite--Beowulf. Except that Mosix is basically, as my friend puts it, "SMP Writ Large"
This is more of a failover technology, e.g. it's not really a "cluster" in the sense you're thinking. It's more than 1 machine, yes, but they're there to provide high availability. Basically, if one machine goes down, another will take over for it.
You can get something similar by going here:
http://linuxvirtualserver.org
They have patches and instructions for setting up a nifty webserver HA cluster, which makes use of apps like mon, heartbeat, and fake (at least 2 of which are Debian packages, which makes my life easier
I'm now building a cluster out of low-end machines, and I'm going to try to run both Mosix AND VirtualServer
To be dangerous.
Many negative effects have been linked to the consumption of dairy products. My mother and brother would both get ear infections during the winter, but not if they stopped drinking milk.
Calcium is useless if you are not able to absorb it. Humans don't need more calcium, they need the magnesium to be able to make use of the calcium.
We are the only species that drinks the milk of another species (no, ants+aphids don't count), and we are the only ones that are never weaned away from it.
Also, tryptophan is NOT found only in milk. Bananas are one example of a tasty fruit product with tryptophan; there are many others, but those can be readily found in books, so I will not list them here.
There have also been studies showing a link between blood type and diet. Such studies find that I, with my type ARh- blood, cannot process animal proteins effectively, and that it is natural for me to become a vegetarian. Since (mostly) eliminating animal sources and caffeine from my diet, I have had far more energy, a better mood, and lost weight, despite no other lifestyle changes. I am not "on a diet", I "have a diet"...I still eat large quantities of food, it's just mostly carbohydrates and vegetables.
It is true that SOME people are not "made" to be vegetarians. My mother feels very faint after about 2 weeks of vegetarianism, so it is not the right choice for her. However, it has done good things for me, and I have no interest in going back. It actually began when I noticed that the digestion of animal products was hard on me when I was ill, but if I stuck to beans/pasta/etc., I was fine. I concluded that it probably wasn't so great for me even when I WASN'T sick...my vegetarianism (and near-veganism) is almost entirely dietary, and has little to do with cute, fuzzy animals.
I strongly suggest that you take care in what you express to be factual. There is not one "right" diet for all human beings, and any attempt to make such sweeping statements is doomed. Yes, your friend may have had a "scientifically balanced diet", but obviously it was not balanced FOR HER. "Modern medicine" still does not really understand the human body.
It should be "==old news" if you are assuming C, C++, etc. as the language. However, in Pascal, "=" is equivalent, and ":=" is assignment. I sometimes _really_ wish that this were also the case in C...
I'm sure people who are older/more of programmers than I can point out some other fun examples...
> 1. why do i get the feeling that linux is hard to install?
:)
:)
Probably because you haven't tried yet. You might think it's hard to waterski if you've never done it, but it really isn't
> 2. I have an old compaq I want to put it on?
Yes.
> 3. Know of any good newbie sites?
Your local LUG. If you don't have one, then borrow MY local LUG, which is very good: linux.umbc.edu. If you want to do something, go to the LDP before asking for help; there are lots of HOWTOs and Mini-HOWTOs on many useful things.
Install Debian, and use a graphical package manager, such as aptitude, which will display zillions of packages with descriptions. Install the ones that sound like you might like them.
This is MUCH better than TeraTerm+SSH! And it comes with SCP! And it's all one file, instead of 12!
:)
Really, thanks very much. I was unaware of this program.
Litestep I've used; my home machine is dual-boot. Odd that I don't use AfterStep in Linux, though, isn't it?
The package name for this is console-apt. It's a colorful, curses front-end to apt, and it ROCKS MY WORLD.
:) I was happy when I found apt, but I still didn't have a way to figure out the name of the package I wanted to apt-get, save firing up a web browser and doing a search.
.deb for you (assuming you're using potato).
There is also gnome-apt, which is a really nice interface, though you need to run X to use it (so I prefer capt for servers).
I personally think dselect is a piece of junk, and that's what kept me away from Debian at first (my first Debian install was on a 68k Mac--talk about an unfair experience on which to judge a distro!
Capt was sadly removed to potato due to some bugs that were (IMO unfairly) classified as release-critical. If you can't find it, email me and I'll make a
RPM users do have an apt-get-like program now; it was put up on Freshmeat recently. However, rpmfind is not quite apt-get; all rpmfind does is to check the ftp sites for updated packages (by default, it does this each night via a cron job). It cannot handle dependencies, and is not really a tool for installing new packages; it's for keeping your system up to date. I use it on 3 workstations that are still RedHat (on an X-terminal, who cares?). It works.
.deb from an existing install and *gasp* actually have a .deb file on my hard disk :)
I suppose I should have clarified the capt thing; I have read the reason they gave for removing it, but I completely disagree with them. Firstly, in using it approximately 8 bazillion times, it has sig-11'd twice (the described bug). Second, they LEFT IN aptitude, which DOESN'T EVEN WORK!! Grrr...I was very surprised/displeased when it vanished; I had to rebuild the
I was a RedHat user for about a year. Now I use Debian. I'll try my best to explain the differences as I see them.
.debs.
:) If you try Debian, don't use dselect. This is my opinion of course, but I think it's a horrible piece of junk. After the base install and reboot, immediatly quit dselect and use apt instead. Sadly, they've removed capt from potato (I can't figure out why), so you will have to try to find this wonderfull tool (I can give you a .deb of it, if you want).
One important thing to remember is that while the Debian package system is dpkg, most people use (and praise) apt, which is a front-end of sorts. Oh, and Debian can also use RPM packages; I'm not sure if RPM-based distros can use
1. Dependencies: RedHat packages depend on files. Debian packages depend on other packages. The advantage of this for RPM is that you can install packages, if you've compiled the libs yourself (eg, OpenSSL w/ RSA), though you can simply force Debian to install the package anyway. The advantage of apt is that it can say, "You need these other 3 packages to use this one. Want me to get them and install them for you?"
2. Getting packages: With RedHat, you go and download your packages, and install them. With apt, you provide it with a list of FTP sites, and what categories of packages you wish to use from those sites (including which version of Debian). You tell it:
"apt-get install foo"
and it checks the FTP sites for foo, does the aforementioned dependency magik, installs it, and cleans up after itself. Oh, and it has you configure the package AS YOU INSTALL IT, which I see as a big plus. With a graphical apt interface such as capt (ncurses), you can browse the list of available files in a nice colorful interface.
3. Upgrading packages: When you upgrade a package, you don't want to overwrite the config files. RPMs either keep your config. files, or move yours to a "config.something", and use theirs. Regardless, they do what they will. Apt asks YOU what YOU think ought to be done:
use the new one
keep your current one(default)
show the differences
If you keep your current one, it saves the new one as "config.dpkg-install", just in case you change your mind later.
4. Upgrading the system: With RedHat (maybe *RPM?), you reboot the system with the CD/disk of the new OS version, and use the "upgrade" option. I've heard mixed results.
With apt, you edit the ftp sources file and change the Debian version (from "slink" or "stable" to "potato", for example). You then do:
apt-get update (refreshes your package list)
apt-get dist-upgrade
In my experience, this has always smoothly upgraded a system. Notice that rebooting is not involved; this is done while things are running, and it suggests at the end that certain services be restarted, and offers to do this for you.
I hope this helps; I can't think of anything else right now. Personally? I've found apt a lot more "pleasant" to use than RPM, which is why I made the switch. Oh, there is one last thing, which is less a difference in distros than philosophy:
RedHat install: Select your packages. Install them. Reboot and enjoy.
Debian install: Install base system, configuring networking and kernel modules. Reboot. Using your new minimal system, install the packages you need.
OK, one last LAST thing
OK, someone else already pointed out vi, and the fact that bash beats the heck out of command.com. Here are a few more obvious examples:
1. Telnet: I use mutt, and vim. When will MS get a terminal program that actually displays color? Or works reliably with backspace?
2. FTP: if nothing else, at least the command-line ftp tool defaults to "binary"...
3. The whole UI: sorry, but AfterStep is about a zillion times better than WindowsUI. It just makes a lot more sense. Or with KDE (for those that want something "closer to Windows"), I can set up nice big buttons on the panel for the apps people use the most. This is a lot better than the Win98 tiny icons next to the Start Menu. Just because people are used to Win9x interfaces doesn't make them better. Why do most artistic people like Macs? WindowsUI == YUCK.
And I don't really want to get into discussions about the underlying OS (symbolic links compared to "shortcuts"?)
Thanks to you and others who have pointed this out, I've got it now and will be trying it shortly (though I use Mozilla now, not Netscape, so I wonder if I will still be able to get it to work)
What I'd really like to see is for Mozilla to support this right off the bat...make it an application type just like MP3s or AVIs, where you can simply go into Preferences and choose your program.
It says so on their page. There's a good reason, of course, and that's the RSA patent...right now SSL technology is proprietary in the US, and so can't really be included with something like Mozilla.
:)
I'm sure, however, that Netscape 5 or 6 or 2001 or whatever it is will still have SSL in it, but don't expect SSL in Mozilla until after September.
As for me, I've been using Mozilla for everything under Linux except SSL stuff, and I'm much happier with it than Netscape. I only want 3 things:
1. Let me use button 2 as "open in new window"...that's what makes Netscape better under Linux than under Windows, 3 buttons.
2. Let me do UNIX pasting! I can paste something _to_ mozilla with "highlight, button 2", but not _from_ mozilla. I REFUSE to submit to the Windows retardation of "copy and paste". Don't be StarOffice!
3. Let me define my own text shortcuts (the first thing I would do is to set hjkl to be motion keys
Odd that you should mention mozilla not working with Hotmail (I can't comment on that, because web mail is horrifying to me, so I haven't tried). You may appreciate the irony that where I work, people have to use Netscape to check their Hotmail account. Why? Because IE has so many security holes, it forces us to disable ActiveScripting, and so it doesn't work with Hotmail.
:)
Also, if you have less than 24 MB of RAM, what other graphical browser will run decently? Netscape? Not really. IE? No, you need to run Windows, and I consider running Windows with less than 64M painful, and with less than 32M as crazy.
Of course, you could always use w3m, if you're so concerned about RAM...and w3m doesn't have anything integrated, either
Well, they're playing the version numbers game, which will look good for everyone who doesn't know any better. (insert same reasons given by Slackware here...)
:) Since AOL controls ICQ as well, it would be interesting to see one of the "universal IM" clients integrated instead. Also, why not integrate WinAmp?
As for AIM being integrated, that is not at all surprising; it was already pretty much forcibly bundled with the previous version of Netscape (under Windows, anyway; even if you told it "No, I don't want anything to do with AIM, go away", it would prompt you AGAIN every so often, and the option would always be there in the menu system. Now that I'm not using Windows, I don't have to think about that
To now contradict myself, anothing thing I'd really like to see is some modularity. I will NEVER user the mail client (mutt), news reader (don't), or HTML editor (vim), and I'd like Netscape to give me the option, as w3m does, of launching mutt for mailto: tags.
I think that virtual servers count just as much as separate machines. If they're using IP aliasing, then it's almost the same as _having_ separate machines (there are a few differences, but to a web browser, they're not apparent). I know of at least one web hosting place that has 11 different clients' webservers running on one machine...I would think that this certainly counts as not simply one server.
Besides, there are probably many small organizations (like mine) which didn't buy Linux, but instead downloaded it (I don't need phone support, I have a LUG!) I have 4 servers running Linux, and one of those servers has 3 aliases (so by my counting, that's 7 servers). Servers like these were not counted at all in these statistics.
I doubt that Linux verdors charge extra for people using IP aliasing, but I'm betting that if NT has a similar feature (does it?), there's licensing fees to be paid for using it. So, I would say that the Linux numbers are DEFLATED, for the factors of freeness and aliases.