I suppose i'm stuck trying to figure out why they pay people so much money to be system
administrators then.
Then get yourself stuck in yet another puzzle trying to figure out why developers (programmers, project leaders, architects) make much more than sysadmins, webmasters and other simians. I'll spell it out for ya: creativity.
The fact of the matter is that your./configure && make && make install allusion
is a poor one. a decent source install rarely involves just those three steps.
It may be so, but it was your choice of example, not mine.
surely you wouldn't go about installing something like apache, perl, or mysql with just those three steps.
The way you say it, you make it sound as if this is some kind of rocket science. I'll tell ya what: most of the guys who do that gig at my (soon to be former) place of work are dimwits. Go figure.
installing from
source is the only way to get a package that is truly configure for your system. anything else might be
able to come close, but definitely not the same. the level of optimization will not be there. the level of
customization will definitely not be there.
I have to ask then: do you need that high a level of customization? Do you need it for all the pacakges you use? And lastly, the ultimate way to really customize your system is to roll your own software. Are you willing to do that?
simple. unfortunately, as precident shows, as you gain user-friendliness, you lose functionality. Look
at windows. Look at MacOS.
Thankfully, I hardly ever see the ugly face of Windows. But I'll contend that Windows NT can do almost anything that Linux can do, if only worse. There is no functionality lost, and more importantly there need not be.
To make my point clear, think of Perl as its evangelists (but do not count me as one) like to picture it: a language that can be used effectively by the novice without too much trouble and in a short time, and yet can have its full potential exploited by the guru. I see package management, desktop environments etc in the same light, and IMHO at least, many of these come much closer to that goal than Perl does.
They isolate
the user from the lower-level system tasks in order to achieve this end.
May I add as a final observation that that is the very purpose of an operating system? --
First things first: cool off, chap. Nobody called you names, so don't go blowing your whistle for nothing. Try to argue your points rationally and intellectually, not emotionally. And remember, it's easy to blow some textual steam when you don't know the person on the other side of the wire, and you don't know how they would react to verbal provocation in real life. I'll allow myself some patronizing in presuming you must be quite young: some ten years of arguing face to face, at work and at home will lend you much more patience.
Now getting back to my point, I don't see how the point of view (and I speak only for myself, as I should) that "no direction is a good direction for Linux to go" is close-minded. If people want to add all the bells and whistles along with kitchen sink to the kernel, that's fine with me, as long as I can compile it out and toggle it off at boot time. If you only want to use text consoles, OK, go ahead, have fun. It's people with your attitude (and BSD advocates in general) that think that they know the One True UNIX Way that Linux should be supposed to adhere strictly too. --
Translation of the above: you think rpm(1) and apt(1) are poor utilities because you don't know how to use them. Manually dumping tarballs at random locations in the file system is not more elegant than using decent package management. It does not take any intellectual effort to do the./configure && make && make install sequence referred to in the post I replied to: a trained monkey can do that.
Lastly, tell me how all of your ranting above differs philosophically from some old fogie clinging stubbornly to his punched card operated mainframe as God's greatest gift to mankind. You think you're on the side of the forces pushing technology forward? Well, think again my friend? --
I'd argue that stability is not what drives people to use Linux, otherwise bug reports on unstable kernels and apps would be very rare. Thank God most people are not like you. --
Ok, so I'm bored and I'm quitting my job, so I have *lots* of time to waste on/. Punto by punto:
Since when did linux cater to the desktop?
And why shouldn't it?
If you want your computer as an appliance only THEN buy an I-opener it'll do the job just fine.
Even though this was not one of the original poster's assertions, he may want to do it for his clients, i.e., wants to sell his own I-opener
If you are sick of using windows why do you want linux to look and act like windows?
Perhaps we're sick of using Windows for reasons other than loooks, how about that?
Embedded systems don't need to show the boot messages. Infact most embedded systems that use linux don't show the messages; however you don't know what you're talking about, so I'd expect that from you.
Embedded system is a broad concept. Many Linux based consumer gadgets may not need a boot screen, but that doesn't mean them all should not have one.
If an engineer wants a pretty package; so be it. Don't add that shit to the kernel though. Linux worked fine without it before. And use windows it was made for that type of stuff
I'm wondering why adding HTTP static service to look good on benchmarks is a worthy goal and this thing is not. As long as you can (ah, that word again) compile it out, I don't see how that can be bad.
If the messages scroll by too fast thats a good sign. I want to know when I have a kernel panic and
I would also like to know how the hardware is interepted under linux if I've added new hardware (i/os,
interrupts etc). When the messages stop.. So do I; to figure out the problem. ...
Linux is not for a dumb user. Unix is not for a dumb user. Freebsd/Openbsd and Solaris is not for a dumb user. ITS not intended to be for a dumb user. Its inteded for people that want power from their systems. So why would you dumb down linux for the dumb user? All in name of the desktop?
Brushing aside the little fact that Linux, FreeBSD, UNIX [TM] and ITS (oh wait, that was only a typo, right? right?) are different systems with different design goals, which were not laid out by you, and which do not include, I'm fairly confident, "not being intended for the dumb", I have to remind you that "dumb" is a very broad stroke to paint people with. A historian who is a very accomplished scholar has no "right" to use Linux, just because she haven't got the time to learn all the command line option to find(1)? I find that kind of lofty arrogance preposterous and irritating.
Look at the history of what Unix and Unix like systems have been used for, then speak intelligently.
Ok, so read up on your history. In case you're too lazy for that here's the deal in a nutshell: UNIX[TM] was designed for a computer whose manufacturer is now defunct, by a company which is now split in atoms, so that their office employees could write manuals with it and their engineers could play games. It was designed from the start so that end users could use it. Of course, the end user at AT&T's offices in the '70s was used to terminals. That's not the case now.
--
It is the concept that we must "make Linux like Windows" and hence remove the optional parts that seems rather silly to me. And that's the mentality I was speaking to.
Funny thing, nowhere in the many replies I see that type of mentality distilled. What I do see is plenty of folks kindly reminding their fellow geek, that indeed the feature provided by this patch can be turned off. What a concept!
So off you went, and made your strawman argument and beat the living ghost out of it. Great! Remember though, it's your own fabrication. --
Why is everyone so convinced that Linux has to be prettied up, promoted, and made palatable to the masses?
Because not everyone is convinced that being on the fringe is all that great, because many think that functionality precludes prettiness and lastly, because perceiving their beloved OS as a good thing they want their non-geek friends and relatives to use it too, without having to become geeks themselves.
Is it such a bad idea after all, that should prompt the same old tired reactions every time something like this is advanced? Is it so terrible to have a nice feature that can be used by non-geeks, but can be switched off by the geeky crowd if it displeases them? --
I may be just one in a million of people telling you this, but since God knows how you were modded up as insightful, here it goes: don't like it, don't use it. And please don't piss on those who may like it. --
Like the above would involve any combination of intelligence and skill and not, as it turns out in real life, of selective patience applied to intolerably monotonous tasks and a huge amount of time to waste waiting for things to compile.
--
Umm... how about because the United States of America is a republic, based on a union of states,
and the whole point of it being the U.S. of A. is that each state gets some representation?
The concept of a union of independent states was fit for those times when most people were born, lived and died in the same place, and hardly ever travelled away from their imediate neighbourhoods. Thus the American states of yore were similar to the German Lnder unified by Bismark. Today, that federative notion does not reflect the reality of most citizens of the US who are American first, happen to live (and vote) in California, but are Michigander at heart.
Plus, like others have pointed out, representation-by-state is pretty well served by the Senate, whose members serve a term considerably longer than the President.
Lastly, the "winner take all" manner in which EC votes are dispersed is the strongest deterrant to the victory of an independent or third party candidate, as it stands. It has no basis in logic and is simply unfair. --
I think you have your geography in twist, having written Sweden instead of Swizerland. Anyways, you'd think a guy from Finland would know more about Sweden's (or Switzerland's for that matter) gun control legislation than you.
Incidentally, I don't think stricter or laxer gun laws are a determinant factor in high gun crime rates. The abundance of gun nuts (i.e. ignorant people poorly handling a gun) and a culture bent on gun violence is a determinant factor, though. --
Why, pray tell us, is it meaningful, or important for electoral purposes to win over a large mass of unpopulated land? I have seen many arguments in favour of the electoral college tossed around here and there, and I can partly understand the argument about preserving smaller (population wise) states from the whims of the inhabitants of larger states and urban concentrations, but methinks you've read these arguments in a twisted way: the area of a state does not (and should not!) play a part in its importance for lectoral purposes!
--
[...] this is the same Church that took nearly two millenia to finally admit that Galileo was correct.
What you wrote makes no sense unless you purport to affirm that Galileo was a contemporary of Jesus Christ, hardly a popular notion. Quip aside, you may also notice that the horrible Crusades were pursued more for political and economical reasons (disenherited Norman noblemen seeking a kingdom to call their own, basically) than for religious motives per se, and that Arab and Turk monarchs had as much part as the Europeans in the treason and bloodshed that characterizes those cruel wars.
Let me also add that if it weren't
for the Muslims a lot of the ancient Greek texts on philosophy, art, culture, would never have been
preserved. In fact, most of the early Christian philosphers studied in Muslim universities.
Your historical notions are horribly twisted and lie upon a foundation of common prejudices about the Middle Ages and the history of the Church. Early Christian philosophers and theologioans, like St. Paul and (especially) St. Augustine lived and worked way before there were any Muslims on the planet, let alone Muslim universities.
Let me add as a final note that, despite being a Catholic, I deeply respect the Islamic faith and the early cultural achievements by Arabic civilizations, but you'll have to look a little deeper than that to find, for instance, who delivered the Library of Alexandria its doomed fate.
Anyways, my jab was aimed at correcting the popular (in the US) notion that Christianinty Protestantism, and that devout Christians are close-minded bigots willing to go back to the Neolithic. --
That's fundy Protestantism, actually. Jesuits, to name but one group in the One True Church, have always cherished science as a way to understand Creation and marvel at the power of God.www.va --
Of course, your totally entitled to your opinion, but I have to observe that SIASL is one of the books where you see less of Heinlein's pontifying, self-righteous and annoying philosophico-political wonderings: these are much more pronounced in Lazarus Long's books and in Stranger are pretty much confined to Jubal's character. In fact, what bothers me most about the book (which I love, BTW) is that the plot seems to be totally haphazard, making twists and turns all the way. What really attracts me to the book is that Heinlein's fruitful imagination is at its peak, flowing unfettered through every line. --
When you go back and resarch your unix history, you will see that the legal issues did not seem to
bother the people who shipped 386BSD and FreeBSD 1.X.
Like I said, legal concerns don't seem to bother some fine businessmen in Colombia either. The fact that that code is not around anymore speaks for itself.
If you want to talk about legal issues, then look into the GPLed code shipping on a virgin webplayer.
Ok, so you're one of those entrenched BSD partisans, that strive to hold on to the 'leetness of your plaything. Ask yourself this, my friend: why is it that NeXT gave up fighting the FSF in the Objective C affair (curiously, the compiler used by the oh-so-'leet, oh-so-holy BSD crowd is still a GPL'ed application). Not even Stallman is stubborn enough to pursue every little arguable GPL violation by a manufacturer that is losing money on its web gadget thing.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I make your words mine and I rest my case. --
Sure. Here's a pound of cocaine, now go and deliver this to my pal Joe in [insert yout least favorite neighborhood here]. Just because something can be done, doesn't meant it is a wise thing to do (specially if it has legal consequences)... --
It seems you need a brush up on your UN*X history... The "legal issues" (who were such a true problem as to eventually lead AT&T and the U of Berkely to face each other in opposing ends of the court) were the reason why BSD had to be purged of all AT&T code and that purged code is the forefather of the current BSD offerings, not the AT&T original UNIX, and not the original BSD. --
Since we're invited to share our biases, I consider the Reformation to be on of the bad consequences of the invention of the printing press, just like spam and Natalie Portman trolls are the annoying outcome of the advent of the Internet. --
If I
remember right the catholic church was not happy about the printing press, especially the printing of
bibles. The last thing they wanted was for the common man to study and understand the bible his or
herself.
And rightly so, because they knew the popularization of printed Bibles (specially those translated into vernacular languages) would allow all manners of used car salesmen to call themselves preachers, just by virtue of thumping the Holy Book with enough self righteousness. Time has only proved them right.
After all, the bastion of religion is ignorance.
Slashdot Mirror
Then get yourself stuck in yet another puzzle trying to figure out why developers (programmers, project leaders, architects) make much more than sysadmins, webmasters and other simians. I'll spell it out for ya: creativity.
The fact of the matter is that your ./configure && make && make install allusion
is a poor one. a decent source install rarely involves just those three steps.
It may be so, but it was your choice of example, not mine.
surely you wouldn't go about installing something like apache, perl, or mysql with just those three steps.
The way you say it, you make it sound as if this is some kind of rocket science. I'll tell ya what: most of the guys who do that gig at my (soon to be former) place of work are dimwits. Go figure.
installing from source is the only way to get a package that is truly configure for your system. anything else might be able to come close, but definitely not the same. the level of optimization will not be there. the level of customization will definitely not be there.
I have to ask then: do you need that high a level of customization? Do you need it for all the pacakges you use? And lastly, the ultimate way to really customize your system is to roll your own software. Are you willing to do that?
simple. unfortunately, as precident shows, as you gain user-friendliness, you lose functionality. Look at windows. Look at MacOS.
Thankfully, I hardly ever see the ugly face of Windows. But I'll contend that Windows NT can do almost anything that Linux can do, if only worse. There is no functionality lost, and more importantly there need not be.
To make my point clear, think of Perl as its evangelists (but do not count me as one) like to picture it: a language that can be used effectively by the novice without too much trouble and in a short time, and yet can have its full potential exploited by the guru. I see package management, desktop environments etc in the same light, and IMHO at least, many of these come much closer to that goal than Perl does.
They isolate the user from the lower-level system tasks in order to achieve this end.
May I add as a final observation that that is the very purpose of an operating system?
--
Now getting back to my point, I don't see how the point of view (and I speak only for myself, as I should) that "no direction is a good direction for Linux to go" is close-minded. If people want to add all the bells and whistles along with kitchen sink to the kernel, that's fine with me, as long as I can compile it out and toggle it off at boot time. If you only want to use text consoles, OK, go ahead, have fun. It's people with your attitude (and BSD advocates in general) that think that they know the One True UNIX Way that Linux should be supposed to adhere strictly too.
--
Lastly, tell me how all of your ranting above differs philosophically from some old fogie clinging stubbornly to his punched card operated mainframe as God's greatest gift to mankind. You think you're on the side of the forces pushing technology forward? Well, think again my friend?
--
I'd argue that stability is not what drives people to use Linux, otherwise bug reports on unstable kernels and apps would be very rare. Thank God most people are not like you.
--
And why shouldn't it?
Even though this was not one of the original poster's assertions, he may want to do it for his clients, i.e., wants to sell his own I-opener
Perhaps we're sick of using Windows for reasons other than loooks, how about that?
Embedded system is a broad concept. Many Linux based consumer gadgets may not need a boot screen, but that doesn't mean them all should not have one.
I'm wondering why adding HTTP static service to look good on benchmarks is a worthy goal and this thing is not. As long as you can (ah, that word again) compile it out, I don't see how that can be bad.
Brushing aside the little fact that Linux, FreeBSD, UNIX [TM] and ITS (oh wait, that was only a typo, right? right?) are different systems with different design goals, which were not laid out by you, and which do not include, I'm fairly confident, "not being intended for the dumb", I have to remind you that "dumb" is a very broad stroke to paint people with. A historian who is a very accomplished scholar has no "right" to use Linux, just because she haven't got the time to learn all the command line option to find(1)? I find that kind of lofty arrogance preposterous and irritating.
Look at the history of what Unix and Unix like systems have been used for, then speak intelligently.
Ok, so read up on your history. In case you're too lazy for that here's the deal in a nutshell: UNIX[TM] was designed for a computer whose manufacturer is now defunct, by a company which is now split in atoms, so that their office employees could write manuals with it and their engineers could play games. It was designed from the start so that end users could use it. Of course, the end user at AT&T's offices in the '70s was used to terminals. That's not the case now.
--
Funny thing, nowhere in the many replies I see that type of mentality distilled. What I do see is plenty of folks kindly reminding their fellow geek, that indeed the feature provided by this patch can be turned off. What a concept!
So off you went, and made your strawman argument and beat the living ghost out of it. Great! Remember though, it's your own fabrication.
--
Because not everyone is convinced that being on the fringe is all that great, because many think that functionality precludes prettiness and lastly, because perceiving their beloved OS as a good thing they want their non-geek friends and relatives to use it too, without having to become geeks themselves.
Is it such a bad idea after all, that should prompt the same old tired reactions every time something like this is advanced? Is it so terrible to have a nice feature that can be used by non-geeks, but can be switched off by the geeky crowd if it displeases them?
--
I may be just one in a million of people telling you this, but since God knows how you were modded up as insightful, here it goes: don't like it, don't use it. And please don't piss on those who may like it.
--
Like the above would involve any combination of intelligence and skill and not, as it turns out in real life, of selective patience applied to intolerably monotonous tasks and a huge amount of time to waste waiting for things to compile.
--
A book such as "Nineteen eighty-four", by George Orwell would be highly elucidative for the case in point.
--
The concept of a union of independent states was fit for those times when most people were born, lived and died in the same place, and hardly ever travelled away from their imediate neighbourhoods. Thus the American states of yore were similar to the German Lnder unified by Bismark. Today, that federative notion does not reflect the reality of most citizens of the US who are American first, happen to live (and vote) in California, but are Michigander at heart.
Plus, like others have pointed out, representation-by-state is pretty well served by the Senate, whose members serve a term considerably longer than the President.
Lastly, the "winner take all" manner in which EC votes are dispersed is the strongest deterrant to the victory of an independent or third party candidate, as it stands. It has no basis in logic and is simply unfair.
--
Incidentally, I don't think stricter or laxer gun laws are a determinant factor in high gun crime rates. The abundance of gun nuts (i.e. ignorant people poorly handling a gun) and a culture bent on gun violence is a determinant factor, though.
--
Why, pray tell us, is it meaningful, or important for electoral purposes to win over a large mass of unpopulated land? I have seen many arguments in favour of the electoral college tossed around here and there, and I can partly understand the argument about preserving smaller (population wise) states from the whims of the inhabitants of larger states and urban concentrations, but methinks you've read these arguments in a twisted way: the area of a state does not (and should not!) play a part in its importance for lectoral purposes!
--
Pardon my French, but being blasé is so passé ...
--
What you wrote makes no sense unless you purport to affirm that Galileo was a contemporary of Jesus Christ, hardly a popular notion. Quip aside, you may also notice that the horrible Crusades were pursued more for political and economical reasons (disenherited Norman noblemen seeking a kingdom to call their own, basically) than for religious motives per se, and that Arab and Turk monarchs had as much part as the Europeans in the treason and bloodshed that characterizes those cruel wars.
Let me also add that if it weren't for the Muslims a lot of the ancient Greek texts on philosophy, art, culture, would never have been preserved. In fact, most of the early Christian philosphers studied in Muslim universities.
Your historical notions are horribly twisted and lie upon a foundation of common prejudices about the Middle Ages and the history of the Church. Early Christian philosophers and theologioans, like St. Paul and (especially) St. Augustine lived and worked way before there were any Muslims on the planet, let alone Muslim universities.
Let me add as a final note that, despite being a Catholic, I deeply respect the Islamic faith and the early cultural achievements by Arabic civilizations, but you'll have to look a little deeper than that to find, for instance, who delivered the Library of Alexandria its doomed fate.
Anyways, my jab was aimed at correcting the popular (in the US) notion that Christianinty Protestantism, and that devout Christians are close-minded bigots willing to go back to the Neolithic.
--
That's fundy Protestantism, actually. Jesuits, to name but one group in the One True Church, have always cherished science as a way to understand Creation and marvel at the power of God.www.va
--
Of course, your totally entitled to your opinion, but I have to observe that SIASL is one of the books where you see less of Heinlein's pontifying, self-righteous and annoying philosophico-political wonderings: these are much more pronounced in Lazarus Long's books and in Stranger are pretty much confined to Jubal's character. In fact, what bothers me most about the book (which I love, BTW) is that the plot seems to be totally haphazard, making twists and turns all the way. What really attracts me to the book is that Heinlein's fruitful imagination is at its peak, flowing unfettered through every line.
--
Like I said, legal concerns don't seem to bother some fine businessmen in Colombia either. The fact that that code is not around anymore speaks for itself.
If you want to talk about legal issues, then look into the GPLed code shipping on a virgin webplayer.
Ok, so you're one of those entrenched BSD partisans, that strive to hold on to the 'leetness of your plaything. Ask yourself this, my friend: why is it that NeXT gave up fighting the FSF in the Objective C affair (curiously, the compiler used by the oh-so-'leet, oh-so-holy BSD crowd is still a GPL'ed application). Not even Stallman is stubborn enough to pursue every little arguable GPL violation by a manufacturer that is losing money on its web gadget thing.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true! I make your words mine and I rest my case.
--
Sure. Here's a pound of cocaine, now go and deliver this to my pal Joe in [insert yout least favorite neighborhood here]. Just because something can be done, doesn't meant it is a wise thing to do (specially if it has legal consequences)...
--
This just goes to show how essential punctuation is for the understandin of text, even when that text is as content-free as Slashdot posts go.
--
Shh... Don't feed the troll, the sign says.
--
It seems you need a brush up on your UN*X history... The "legal issues" (who were such a true problem as to eventually lead AT&T and the U of Berkely to face each other in opposing ends of the court) were the reason why BSD had to be purged of all AT&T code and that purged code is the forefather of the current BSD offerings, not the AT&T original UNIX, and not the original BSD.
--
Since we're invited to share our biases, I consider the Reformation to be on of the bad consequences of the invention of the printing press, just like spam and Natalie Portman trolls are the annoying outcome of the advent of the Internet.
--
And rightly so, because they knew the popularization of printed Bibles (specially those translated into vernacular languages) would allow all manners of used car salesmen to call themselves preachers, just by virtue of thumping the Holy Book with enough self righteousness. Time has only proved them right. After all, the bastion of religion is ignorance.
No, it is the bastion of false religion.
--
Just so you know, "Celeste" means heavenly, celestial (duh!). Compreende? Capisce?
--