One - the most obvious - being that people want the same system that they've got at home.
Maybe, but I doubt it. I don't know many people who want to replace their NT box at work with 98 because that's what they have at home.
They want to be able to install programs.
This is absolutely the Number 1 thing you don't want users to be able to do.
They want to be able to set the system up to their preferences.
I don't see any reason NC's prevent this. I certainly am able to configure my own themes and desktop layout under X.
Also, there is a privacy issue. You cannot possibly belive that the workers use all the time *working*.
Having your files on your own box doesn't help. Unless you have permissions on the file system. But the server allows you to set file permissions too, so I don't see what the difference would be.
If workers store their work at individual machines, everything won't be lost at the same time.
Storing your work on your own PC may be fine for a very small company ( less then 15 employees). But in that case, NC's probably wouldn't be a viable solution. Show me any large company that would keep employee's work on their local hard drives? The idea is preposterous.
I'm too lazy to read the article. I did read the hacker's (yes, he is a hacker) how-I-did-it piece and it didn't tell me *why* that CGI script was there. What was it doing there? Why was it installed?
In order to simulate a real web server, PC Week Labs had to have it exist for a reason. So they installed a Classified Ads application. And it had a hole.
If you read the page where they described the configuration changes they made, you'll see that they made more changes to NT then they comparatively made to Linux. As in, it was biased a lot more then just not installing all the patches on Linux. They made registry changes. *By* hand, I presume. They moved some of the admin tools to a different location on NT, but didn't move the comparative tools on Linux.
They were comparing apples to oranges anyways. They used a CGI application on Linux and a scripted application (ASP) on NT. Come on, to be fair they should have used a scripted application on Linux also. They *know* what php is, they used it for the forums
But as it turns out there is a way to get all-inclusive patches for Linux. Install a new release. They come out every few months, much more frequently than Microsoft service packs, and generally include all previous patches. The upgrade process is fairly similar in difficulty to applying an NT service pack. Interestingly this isn't mentioned.
Six months for Red Hat to be specific. Probably a lot faster then MS releases service packs. That's basically what RH 6.1 is, a service pack in MS terms for 6.0. There is only one difference. Red Hat replaces their old version with the new version. If I buy a copy of NT today, would I still have to install SP5? I imagine so.
Still though, I wouldn't want to have to wait until the next version was released to fix security holes. Not even on NT.
I saw one of the textbooks for the OS class, and this thing stated that NT5.0 was coming out at the end of the year, and that since it was one of the newest OS's around, it was functionally better than Unix.
Thanks, I needed that. I don't know whether to feel sorry for those people or just consider that that's the highest pinnacle they'll ever reach in their lives. Of course, if they really have a brain, but aren't able to develop it because they are fed that type of garbage, then yes, I guess I feel sorry for them. Microsoft has probably mentally destroyed more people then all the casualties of every war combined.
These are the people who when they get to the real world are clueless enough to believe that the project they were hired to develop will be complete, featureful, and bug free in 2 months. Now what will they say? "Why should we keep working on this application that's already been released. If we start all over it will be functionally better then the old program. Oh, and it'll only take 2 weeks to rewrite it anyways."
Sounds like you have a good business idea. Go get some venture capital money and post your URL. Just make sure I get a cut for the idea.
LSL updates their GPL RedHat CD constantly. From their web site:
Many times after an official distribution is released, bugs are found and updates are posted to the distributor's ftp site. The GNU General Public License allows us obtain the software and it's updates from a distribution site and creating a CD ROM with the site's contents. This ensures that you have the latest material and updates for the product and have a more recent version than the official distribution.
this has gotta slow down.. i think there should be some "service packs" and not new version #'s for minor upgrades and such..
Not really. I mean this *is* a.1 release. nothing major. Basically this is just a "service pack" release, or as our arch enemy at Redmond calls it, the "Second Edition".
i would have hoped redhat 6.1 would have waited until Xfree86 4 or something a lil more worth the version # change would have come out..
Yes, but Linux 2.4 and Xfree86 4 are pretty radical changes. Don't you think that should get a version 7 number? That won't be for a few months yet anyways. Certainly way to long to wait to upgrade something that was released even longer ago.
I just take it out of the drivers tip in hope that the complaints from drivers will get it lifted...
Man, next you will complain that they *charge* for the pizza.
Hmm, delivery charge, or no more delivery's? Although there is "free lunch" in the software world, you'll never find that buying pizzas. You have to pay for what you get.
Perhaps if you don't like paying a delivery charge you could consider going out and picking up your pizza yourself, so that those of us who *do* appreciate getting a pizza delivery can get the quality service we pay for.
This is so funny! Can you imagine some bonehead coming up with this idea, of projecting an ad on the moon with lasers?!?!
The first thing I thought of was that this was an April Fools joke. Hey, it really *is* halfway in between April Fools making this a half April Fools day. Sort of like a half birthday. Some editor was having fun today. Pizza Hut really *didn't* have ideas of advertising on the moon.
Besides this should have been posted under, "It's Funny. Laugh" and not "News"
..to get that damned space station operational, I'm all for it. Let all the Russian rockets be decorated like NASCAR stock cars (or Formula 1 cars if you prefer). At least they'll have some dough to participate (no pun intended...no wait I guess it is intended).
There are TONS of other distributions like this, what makes this one so special?
Ah, simply that fact that it is?
Okay, so Armed Linux *doesn't* do anything more then some of the other Distro's do that allow you to use a fat partition to install Linux on. But remember, first thing is that download.com can't list *every* like software package. They listed one, that's cool. Someone probably let them know about that distro and they thought it was cool. They probably don't even *know* that there are others that do the same thing. After all that is largely an ungrasped concept in the Windows world. 3 different versions of Linux that all do the same thing? WoW! Perhaps if that bothers you, you could drop them a kind e-mail pointing out the other similar distributions. Or maybe they did know about the others and chose this one as the best for their site. WinLinux' FTP site has been swamped the last few days, that probably cuts them out for a link on download.com.
And I am not aware of Red Hat having carried out anything like the level of effort which GM goes through in product recalls. Just saying "a good network admin would have kept up with this" doesn't make it. Your product, your liability.
Red Hat has an Errata page, they have 2 mailing lists, and for registered users, they have a priority access site. They seem to have the level of effort needed in their case. Now, you show me where I can get on Microsoft's e-mail lists, where their web page is listing their patches, and where they put the patches on their FTP server, and how do I get priority service? They *probably* have all that, but I looked for about 10 minutes and didn't find it. Only took me about 2 minutes to find all I needed on Red Hat's site.
Second, if Red Hat's effort *isn't* enough, then *you* tell me what it is you are looking for.
Unless the take-over-the-world faction among Linux advocates want to plaster every commercial distribution with disclaimers shouting "THIS PRODUCT MAY HAVE SERIOUS SECURITY HOLES -- IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY AND YOURS ALONE TO KEEP UP TO DATE WITH THEM"
That's Microsoft license agreement, isn't it? I *knew* it looked familiar.
What it does show is that, although Linux is more secure than NT off the shelf, both still require a sysadmin that does his research throughly and keeps up with bug fixes.
Do we know that the NT Server was an "off the shelf" install? Would that be with no service packs?
So, well; let's take it with head high. Linux lost.
Did Linux lose? I guess the question is, too what? If it was really a stock install of NT, then we *know* that NT isn't secure. So this just implies basically that no one cared enough to spend 20 hours hacking NT. This is a Linux user, who hacked *his* baby. He didn't hack Linux to prove that it was a failure, but to prove that the box wasn't configured right, had other problems unrelated to Linux, or whatever. Okay, he did it to win the $1000 too.
The point is, I think Linux won. PC Week provided an incentive to find holes in our own OS. This was cause greater awareness of the need to competent administrators, whether it be Linux or NT. And it proved something about security methods.
The only "loser" in this case is Microsoft. They didn't find any new holes in their OS (yet) so it won't be improved. Microsoft is hardly going to be successfully in selling a claim that NT doesn't need to be patch like Linux does. And people will have a greater understanding as to why the Open Source security model is better then the closed source security model.
I'm not so sure that the "typical" corporate type is going to be enthusiastic about having to check the RedHat website regularly for updates that might come in on a weekly or daily basis. I know his boss isn't going to be happy about having to let the person maintaining the server spend two hours a day crusing Usenet to keep up with the exploit-of-the-hour as it's announced to all the companies friends and foes.
So Wise Guy, how do I get on Microsoft's program to get their Hot Fixes beamed to me? Right now keeping up with security vulnerabilities on NT requires subscribing to the ntbugtraq.com, list, and searching Microsoft's site. That sure is a pain, but the alternative is waiting around for Service Packs. At least Windows 98 has the Critical Notification Update thingie which helps.
Red Hat has a page that can be monitered, and an e-mail list. And if that's not what you want, you can let someone else bundle the fixes together for you in something like MS' service packs. Try LSL for example.
I don't know about you, but I'll take keeping Red Hat up to date over NT any day.
Look, it may be a "well known bug", but it's still a gaping security hole that got installed with the default RedHat distro. I can foresee a *lot* of situations where this sort of thing would bite a company on the ass. Maybe I'm a new admin. Maybe I'm busy and don't keep up on the latest bug reports. Maybe I just forgot or didn't know how to work around it. The point is, this isn't something I should have to deal with.
You don't do much work with NT, do you? If you did, you'd realize that patches were an important part of the Administrative Responsibilities. You see, it's just not Linux where vulnerabilities are found and have to be patched. And it's not just OS's. Come ON! I now had to apply a patch to fix a vulnerability in Office 97.
These things should be addressed, not spun.
They were addressed. And the page to keep up to date with these issues is well documented.
The only way to find the holes is to have competitions like this where people have to tell you how they did the crack. This is what OSS is all about, having an army of people looking for problems.
Yes, think about it this way. PC Week was trying to *prove* whether one OS was more secure then another. Were they successful? No. You can't prove that one OS is more secure then another by just plopping boxes on the web and asking for them to be hacked. All PC Week "proved" was that they weren't competent to administer a Linux box.
Okay, lessons learned. Microsoft is wrong. People aren't born with a copy of Linux in their hand. But they aren't born with an in-depth knowledge of NT either. If you fail to understand how to administer an OS, it's not because it's more difficult, it's because you haven't learned. If you *really* know how to administer NT, it's not because of its alleged "ease of use", it's because *you* took the time to learn it.
This was good for the Linux community. Linux was hacked. But it wasn't *just* hacked, it was a documented hack. We know how it was hacked, and can learn from it. Competition aside, these sorts of things are very good for the Linux community. PC Week basically *paid* to make Linux better. When PC Week (or anyone else) does this again, we'll learn more. And eventually we'll end up with a much stronger OS because of it. Sure, maybe we could set up boxes ourselves and find holes, but sometimes it takes that $1000 as an incentive to doing so.
If you handed these same people a machine with an unpartitioned drive and a windows disk, they would obviously have the same problems.
It is my experience that they'd have more problems. Just an example...
Just about a week ago I installed a VooDoo II card. Should have been simple right? Well, I had to move the PCI network card to get the VooDoo II next to the video card. Insert the cards, closed it up, and booted Windows 98. WHHAAATT??? Windows 98 first decided to install *another* driver for my network card. So it did that, and I rebooted. Logged back in, and now I have *2* NIC drivers installed. Removed one, and then rebooted *again*. After logging in, I found out that I couldn't connect to the network. Windows 98 had decided to *reconfigure* my IP settings. So I fixed that up and, yep, you guessed it, rebooted again. So I rebooted 3 times and finally was back to the place I started at before installing the VooDoo II card. And I'm not the only one who has problems upgrading hardware under Windows. It's obvious that that is way beyond the grasp of the consumer.
How about the install? I shouldn't have to even mention that. Even with a smooth install, it's going to require the floppy shuffle to install all the newer drivers. And what chance to you think a consumer is going to associate what the Wizard is installing with the actual CD or disk the driver is one. Commonly my friends call me and ask, "It wants a disk for the PCI Network device, what's that. Uh, that's the disk with 'Netgear' on the label. Oh, okay it took that."...
And then after all that, do you have a complete setup? Oops, gotta install Office, and set up internet access and networking. With Linux, it's 20 minutes, and KDE is installed and configured, KOffice is installed and configured, networking is configured, and so on. Okay, maybe Linux *isn't* all the way there yet, but I'll bet it beats Microsoft to it.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I for one advocate iMacs to all those who don't know anything about computers, and don't *want* to know about computers. For everyone else, Linux is the way to go. Sure, there's BeOS and FreeBSD and others, but if they know that much they'll know whether it's the OS for them.
Linux is also the way to go in environments like corporations where the users don't know anything, and don't *need* to know anything because there are real computer people to support them. Of course, having a thin-client solution is an even better solution in such environments.
Don't you think that Oracle "optimized" the benchmark to beat? If MS beat the best optimization that Oracle could do by 6,000%, I'd say that is still impressive.
Of *course* Oracle optimised their database. That's not the point. The point is, *did* they optimise it to do best in the same areas as Microsoft did? High performance in one area may be crippled by lack of performance in another area. If you optimise software to do good in a specific benchmark, it may then perform shoddy in a real production environment.
I find benchmarks distasteful. You can get any numbers you want, and they end up having *nothing* to do with performance in a production environment. Benchmarks *aren't* about comparing apples to apples. Thanks about it...
You should go to IE5. I'm sorry, but IE5 is so much better than any version of Netscape it's not even funny.
That's true, of course. But please, please don't forget that it is also a newer version. It is incredibly unfair to compare Netscape 4.7 to IE 5.
As an analogy let's imagine that Ford had a monopoly in the auto field. They own every auto lot, and it is very hard for Chevy to sell vehicles. Not only that but Chevy doesn't have the R&D budget that Ford does to develop new vehicles so their vehicles are falling more and more behind. They stop development on their current lines to develop a new line. Now Ford has no competition. They *still* sell the cars but don't improve them apart from a bit of needed maintainence. Does anyone buy their cars? Probably, but they are old tech by know with none of the features that Fords cars have. Does that mean that Chevy's new line is going to be bad also? No, when Chevy releases their new line people will be able to decide *then* that it is better then Ford.
I use IE 5 now. Is that a problem? Of course not. However, when Mozilla is released I'll evaluate whether it's better and then make the decision of whether to use it. I've been following progress and I think it *is* going to be better. So yes, Windows 95 is better then Win 3.1, Caldera 2.3 is better then Caldera 1.3, a color TV is better then a B/W one, IE 5 is better then Netscape 4 *now*. Don't assume that'll always be the case, because that's the way it is in the present.
But we are all very smart here and already knew that, right?:)
2 problems with this. The first is that numbers are really meaningless. Database performance depends on many things. So Microsoft optimised SQL server to be *fast* under certain usage. However, will it have that speed when *you* get it on your server? You don't know until you try.
We have seen this with many benchmarks. The Mindcraft benchmarks are a stunning example. NT is faster... under certain circumstances. c't showed that under other circumstances Linux is faster. What's the point? Benchmarks are relativily bogus, unless you've done them for your *own* setup. For instance, I'd be more willing to trust these benchmarks then Mindcrafts
Second is, he's right. People won't be using Oracle for low cost databases. That's not the purpose of Oracle. But they won't be going to Microsoft either. It'll be too expensive. There are much better low-cost database solutions. MySQL, PostgresSQL, and others.
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Maybe, but I doubt it. I don't know many people who want to replace their NT box at work with 98 because that's what they have at home.
They want to be able to install programs.This is absolutely the Number 1 thing you don't want users to be able to do.
They want to be able to set the system up to their preferences.I don't see any reason NC's prevent this. I certainly am able to configure my own themes and desktop layout under X.
Also, there is a privacy issue. You cannot possibly belive that the workers use all the time *working*.Having your files on your own box doesn't help. Unless you have permissions on the file system. But the server allows you to set file permissions too, so I don't see what the difference would be.
If workers store their work at individual machines, everything won't be lost at the same time.Storing your work on your own PC may be fine for a very small company ( less then 15 employees). But in that case, NC's probably wouldn't be a viable solution. Show me any large company that would keep employee's work on their local hard drives? The idea is preposterous.
-Brent--
But that's only NT 3.5, and only when it's not hooked up to a network.
-Brent--
In order to simulate a real web server, PC Week Labs had to have it exist for a reason. So they installed a Classified Ads application. And it had a hole.
If you read the page where they described the configuration changes they made, you'll see that they made more changes to NT then they comparatively made to Linux. As in, it was biased a lot more then just not installing all the patches on Linux. They made registry changes. *By* hand, I presume. They moved some of the admin tools to a different location on NT, but didn't move the comparative tools on Linux.
They were comparing apples to oranges anyways. They used a CGI application on Linux and a scripted application (ASP) on NT. Come on, to be fair they should have used a scripted application on Linux also. They *know* what php is, they used it for the forums
-Brent--
Six months for Red Hat to be specific. Probably a lot faster then MS releases service packs. That's basically what RH 6.1 is, a service pack in MS terms for 6.0. There is only one difference. Red Hat replaces their old version with the new version. If I buy a copy of NT today, would I still have to install SP5? I imagine so.
Still though, I wouldn't want to have to wait until the next version was released to fix security holes. Not even on NT.
-Brent--
I use Linuxconf on Debian 2.1. It appears to work fine...
-Brent--
Hahahahahahahahhaahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!
Thanks, I needed that. I don't know whether to feel sorry for those people or just consider that that's the highest pinnacle they'll ever reach in their lives. Of course, if they really have a brain, but aren't able to develop it because they are fed that type of garbage, then yes, I guess I feel sorry for them. Microsoft has probably mentally destroyed more people then all the casualties of every war combined.
These are the people who when they get to the real world are clueless enough to believe that the project they were hired to develop will be complete, featureful, and bug free in 2 months. Now what will they say? "Why should we keep working on this application that's already been released. If we start all over it will be functionally better then the old program. Oh, and it'll only take 2 weeks to rewrite it anyways."
-Brent--
LSL updates their GPL RedHat CD constantly. From their web site:
-Brent--
Not really. I mean this *is* a .1 release. nothing major. Basically this is just a "service pack" release, or as our arch enemy at Redmond calls it, the "Second Edition".
i would have hoped redhat 6.1 would have waited until Xfree86 4 or something a lil more worth the version # change would have come out..Yes, but Linux 2.4 and Xfree86 4 are pretty radical changes. Don't you think that should get a version 7 number? That won't be for a few months yet anyways. Certainly way to long to wait to upgrade something that was released even longer ago.
-Brent--
Man, next you will complain that they *charge* for the pizza.
Hmm, delivery charge, or no more delivery's? Although there is "free lunch" in the software world, you'll never find that buying pizzas. You have to pay for what you get.
Perhaps if you don't like paying a delivery charge you could consider going out and picking up your pizza yourself, so that those of us who *do* appreciate getting a pizza delivery can get the quality service we pay for.
-Brent--
The first thing I thought of was that this was an April Fools joke. Hey, it really *is* halfway in between April Fools making this a half April Fools day. Sort of like a half birthday. Some editor was having fun today. Pizza Hut really *didn't* have ideas of advertising on the moon.
Besides this should have been posted under, "It's Funny. Laugh" and not "News"
-Brent--
You mean painted up like this?
-Brent--
In that case ... you can't miss this.
-Brent--
Ah, simply that fact that it is?
Okay, so Armed Linux *doesn't* do anything more then some of the other Distro's do that allow you to use a fat partition to install Linux on. But remember, first thing is that download.com can't list *every* like software package. They listed one, that's cool. Someone probably let them know about that distro and they thought it was cool. They probably don't even *know* that there are others that do the same thing. After all that is largely an ungrasped concept in the Windows world. 3 different versions of Linux that all do the same thing? WoW! Perhaps if that bothers you, you could drop them a kind e-mail pointing out the other similar distributions. Or maybe they did know about the others and chose this one as the best for their site. WinLinux' FTP site has been swamped the last few days, that probably cuts them out for a link on download.com.
-Brent--
Red Hat has an Errata page, they have 2 mailing lists, and for registered users, they have a priority access site. They seem to have the level of effort needed in their case. Now, you show me where I can get on Microsoft's e-mail lists, where their web page is listing their patches, and where they put the patches on their FTP server, and how do I get priority service? They *probably* have all that, but I looked for about 10 minutes and didn't find it. Only took me about 2 minutes to find all I needed on Red Hat's site.
Second, if Red Hat's effort *isn't* enough, then *you* tell me what it is you are looking for.
Unless the take-over-the-world faction among Linux advocates want to plaster every commercial distribution with disclaimers shouting "THIS PRODUCT MAY HAVE SERIOUS SECURITY HOLES -- IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY AND YOURS ALONE TO KEEP UP TO DATE WITH THEM"That's Microsoft license agreement, isn't it? I *knew* it looked familiar.
-Brent--
Do we know that the NT Server was an "off the shelf" install? Would that be with no service packs?
So, well; let's take it with head high. Linux lost.Did Linux lose? I guess the question is, too what? If it was really a stock install of NT, then we *know* that NT isn't secure. So this just implies basically that no one cared enough to spend 20 hours hacking NT. This is a Linux user, who hacked *his* baby. He didn't hack Linux to prove that it was a failure, but to prove that the box wasn't configured right, had other problems unrelated to Linux, or whatever. Okay, he did it to win the $1000 too.
The point is, I think Linux won. PC Week provided an incentive to find holes in our own OS. This was cause greater awareness of the need to competent administrators, whether it be Linux or NT. And it proved something about security methods.
The only "loser" in this case is Microsoft. They didn't find any new holes in their OS (yet) so it won't be improved. Microsoft is hardly going to be successfully in selling a claim that NT doesn't need to be patch like Linux does. And people will have a greater understanding as to why the Open Source security model is better then the closed source security model.
-Brent--
So Wise Guy, how do I get on Microsoft's program to get their Hot Fixes beamed to me? Right now keeping up with security vulnerabilities on NT requires subscribing to the ntbugtraq.com, list, and searching Microsoft's site. That sure is a pain, but the alternative is waiting around for Service Packs. At least Windows 98 has the Critical Notification Update thingie which helps.
Red Hat has a page that can be monitered, and an e-mail list. And if that's not what you want, you can let someone else bundle the fixes together for you in something like MS' service packs. Try LSL for example.
I don't know about you, but I'll take keeping Red Hat up to date over NT any day.
-Brent--
You don't do much work with NT, do you? If you did, you'd realize that patches were an important part of the Administrative Responsibilities. You see, it's just not Linux where vulnerabilities are found and have to be patched. And it's not just OS's. Come ON! I now had to apply a patch to fix a vulnerability in Office 97.
These things should be addressed, not spun.They were addressed. And the page to keep up to date with these issues is well documented.
-Brent--
True enough, but remember, the only *real* hole was the CGI one. The other holes had already been fixed, PC Week just failed to apply the patches.
Every OS has patches. If you don't apply the patches, whether it's NT or Linux, you don't have a secure OS. End Of Story.
-Brent--
Yes, think about it this way. PC Week was trying to *prove* whether one OS was more secure then another. Were they successful? No. You can't prove that one OS is more secure then another by just plopping boxes on the web and asking for them to be hacked. All PC Week "proved" was that they weren't competent to administer a Linux box.
Okay, lessons learned. Microsoft is wrong. People aren't born with a copy of Linux in their hand. But they aren't born with an in-depth knowledge of NT either. If you fail to understand how to administer an OS, it's not because it's more difficult, it's because you haven't learned. If you *really* know how to administer NT, it's not because of its alleged "ease of use", it's because *you* took the time to learn it.
This was good for the Linux community. Linux was hacked. But it wasn't *just* hacked, it was a documented hack. We know how it was hacked, and can learn from it. Competition aside, these sorts of things are very good for the Linux community. PC Week basically *paid* to make Linux better. When PC Week (or anyone else) does this again, we'll learn more. And eventually we'll end up with a much stronger OS because of it. Sure, maybe we could set up boxes ourselves and find holes, but sometimes it takes that $1000 as an incentive to doing so.
OTOH, what has Microsoft learned?
-Brent--
Actually, I believe the word was that a beta would be released by the end of the year.
-Brent--
It is my experience that they'd have more problems. Just an example...
Just about a week ago I installed a VooDoo II card. Should have been simple right? Well, I had to move the PCI network card to get the VooDoo II next to the video card. Insert the cards, closed it up, and booted Windows 98. WHHAAATT??? Windows 98 first decided to install *another* driver for my network card. So it did that, and I rebooted. Logged back in, and now I have *2* NIC drivers installed. Removed one, and then rebooted *again*. After logging in, I found out that I couldn't connect to the network. Windows 98 had decided to *reconfigure* my IP settings. So I fixed that up and, yep, you guessed it, rebooted again. So I rebooted 3 times and finally was back to the place I started at before installing the VooDoo II card. And I'm not the only one who has problems upgrading hardware under Windows. It's obvious that that is way beyond the grasp of the consumer.
How about the install? I shouldn't have to even mention that. Even with a smooth install, it's going to require the floppy shuffle to install all the newer drivers. And what chance to you think a consumer is going to associate what the Wizard is installing with the actual CD or disk the driver is one. Commonly my friends call me and ask, "It wants a disk for the PCI Network device, what's that. Uh, that's the disk with 'Netgear' on the label. Oh, okay it took that."...
And then after all that, do you have a complete setup? Oops, gotta install Office, and set up internet access and networking. With Linux, it's 20 minutes, and KDE is installed and configured, KOffice is installed and configured, networking is configured, and so on. Okay, maybe Linux *isn't* all the way there yet, but I'll bet it beats Microsoft to it.
-Brent--
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I for one advocate iMacs to all those who don't know anything about computers, and don't *want* to know about computers. For everyone else, Linux is the way to go. Sure, there's BeOS and FreeBSD and others, but if they know that much they'll know whether it's the OS for them.
Linux is also the way to go in environments like corporations where the users don't know anything, and don't *need* to know anything because there are real computer people to support them. Of course, having a thin-client solution is an even better solution in such environments.
-Brent--
Of *course* Oracle optimised their database. That's not the point. The point is, *did* they optimise it to do best in the same areas as Microsoft did? High performance in one area may be crippled by lack of performance in another area. If you optimise software to do good in a specific benchmark, it may then perform shoddy in a real production environment.
I find benchmarks distasteful. You can get any numbers you want, and they end up having *nothing* to do with performance in a production environment. Benchmarks *aren't* about comparing apples to apples. Thanks about it...
-Brent--
That's true, of course. But please, please don't forget that it is also a newer version. It is incredibly unfair to compare Netscape 4.7 to IE 5.
As an analogy let's imagine that Ford had a monopoly in the auto field. They own every auto lot, and it is very hard for Chevy to sell vehicles. Not only that but Chevy doesn't have the R&D budget that Ford does to develop new vehicles so their vehicles are falling more and more behind. They stop development on their current lines to develop a new line. Now Ford has no competition. They *still* sell the cars but don't improve them apart from a bit of needed maintainence. Does anyone buy their cars? Probably, but they are old tech by know with none of the features that Fords cars have. Does that mean that Chevy's new line is going to be bad also? No, when Chevy releases their new line people will be able to decide *then* that it is better then Ford.
I use IE 5 now. Is that a problem? Of course not. However, when Mozilla is released I'll evaluate whether it's better and then make the decision of whether to use it. I've been following progress and I think it *is* going to be better. So yes, Windows 95 is better then Win 3.1, Caldera 2.3 is better then Caldera 1.3, a color TV is better then a B/W one, IE 5 is better then Netscape 4 *now*. Don't assume that'll always be the case, because that's the way it is in the present.
But we are all very smart here and already knew that, right? :)
-Brent--
2 problems with this. The first is that numbers are really meaningless. Database performance depends on many things. So Microsoft optimised SQL server to be *fast* under certain usage. However, will it have that speed when *you* get it on your server? You don't know until you try.
We have seen this with many benchmarks. The Mindcraft benchmarks are a stunning example. NT is faster ... under certain circumstances. c't showed that under other circumstances Linux is faster. What's the point? Benchmarks are relativily bogus, unless you've done them for your *own* setup. For instance, I'd be more willing to trust these benchmarks then Mindcrafts
Second is, he's right. People won't be using Oracle for low cost databases. That's not the purpose of Oracle. But they won't be going to Microsoft either. It'll be too expensive. There are much better low-cost database solutions. MySQL, PostgresSQL, and others.
-Brent--