There were rumours flying around a while ago that open-source Radeon 8500 drivers would be appearing. I'm therefore sad to see that ATi have decided that closed source drivers are the way forward. I don't see any reason to promote this on Slashdot, or to consider this in any way beneficial for the open source community; remember, closed-source Linux drivers are not support, they're marketing. Thanks, ATi, I'll be buying my graphics hardware elsewhere in the future.
There are two ways of doing this. You can use SVGATextMode if you're using a normal console (and have a supported graphics card), or you can use fbset if you're using a framebuffer console. Works nicely for me.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Note that the ext2 filesystem in FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE is actually under the GPL, as it uses bits of Linux code; this is why it's disabled by default. I assume it would therefore be entirely possible for someone to produce a port of this to FreeBSD; they just wouldn't be able to ship a compiled version (without saying that the rest of that copy of the kernel was being distributed under the terms of the GPL).
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Well, this was entirely predictable. There's a port of IE to Unix already using MainWin, so I'd guess that they've actually had this running for several years.
I used MainWin myself for a project last year, and didn't like it one little bit; it's very, very slow, incomplete, buggy, makes no use of any other toolkit, and requires daemons running in the background. Plus MainSoft's sales people are deeply annoying.
Office ported with MainWin would be unusable. Not that I would have recommended using MS products before, but I'd really recommend giving this one a wide berth.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Why is there a FreeBSD 3.4, 3.5, 4.x, *and* 5.x *all* being worked on?
For the same reason that Linux 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4 are all being worked on. Some people don't want to upgrade, because they've got custom drivers that only work on older versions, or they simply don't need the new features.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Wow! Thanks, Borland. I'm going to enjoy playing with this tonight.
I wonder how this is going to affect PostgreSQL and MySQL? It'll be interesting to see if it sucks developers away or not. I suspect it won't, as database specialists are few and far between...
And while I'm here, did Slashdot miss Redhat's GPL release of Source Navigator (Cygnus's IDE)? Hmmmm... I don't think I'm going to get any sleep tonight.:)
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
(or the uninitiated, that's the Usenet Death Penalty; cutting Deja's Usenet feed. I don't like giving companies free advertising, so I definitely don't want Deja inserting links to products from the text of my articles.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
As a British "subject", I feel slightly more qualified to talk about this then you do. First, "billions of dollars collected from you" is rather inaccurate---first, she collects pounds, and secondly, it's more like millions or tens of millions (remember the British billion is 10^12). "Rules like she is God's right hand" is also an interesting viewpoint, given that Britain's monarchy hasn't exercised its right to veto a law passed in the UK for at least a couple of centuries.
I'm pro-Monarchy, but only 'cos they make a nice tourist attraction.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
There's plenty of COMPETING LINUX DISTROS, or haven't you noticed. I don't see too many COMPETING BSD DISTRIBUTIONS.
There's the odd vertical one like PicoBSD, but effectively Free/Open/NetBSD serve the same purpose as Redhat/Debian/SuSE/Slackware Linux. Different Linux distros are about as different as different BSDs.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Exactly. I always try to attribute code that I've "quoted" in my work. The advertising clause was intended to make attribution required; instead it just required a page of legalese for every collection of BSD software. What I'd now like to see is other BSD-licensing authors retracting their advertising clauses---if you look at FreeBSD's docs, the UCB line is one of a hundred or so.
As a long-time (hah!) Linux user, I finally got around to installing FreeBSD last night under VMware. The install procedure is lovely (although a loadlin-like way to start it from a DOS partition would be useful---it took me the normal hour to find a disk that worked!); nice quick setup installing over the emulated network. The kernel's configuration stuff is also very nice indeed. Being able to add multiple users at install time is useful, as is being able to edit the FTP login message and other stuff (although the editor they provide could be better). I'm definitely going to play around with it some more. However, the userspace tools suck badly---I've got to install GNU bash/textutils/fileutils etc. to make it usable.
(Incidentally, I don't see any Linux distro attributing all the BSD-licensed stuff in their advertisements...)
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
I for one would have no problem with a less 'viral' GPL, for instance "Any changes made to this code must be released under this license or one with no more restrictions", but no, GPL says that even my code which is completely independant must be GPLd if I use their code..
No, because that would negate the purpose of the GPL. If you want this, use the BSD license for your code. (The reason being that if you could relicense under a less restrictive license, you could just relicense it as Public Domain and do anything to it.) And yes, I think readline being GPL (rather than LGPL, which allows linking with non-GPL stuff) is ridiculous too.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
The advantage of the GNU licenses are that they require derivative versions to stay freely-distributable; the advantage of the BSD license is that it allows derivative versions to be proprietory. Pick whichever you like---it's not a big deal. (I like the GNU licenses myself.) Congrats to the UCB people for making this decision.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
One solution is to make everybody use an authenticated proxy server, as that allows you to see more-or-less who's been looking at what. If you're really in a BOFH mood, borrow a video projector and tail -f the proxy's log file onto the wall in some public area.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
You can probably run the Linux RealAudio binaries through iBCS. If you have problems with sound output, you can use the ESD "esddsp" wrapper to redirect to a native esd.
And I agree---FreeBSD isn't better or worse than Linux, it's just different. I'll try it myself at some point (I've done OpenBSD and NetBSD in the past).
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
I can't think of a completely clean-room UNIX clone out there.
Linux comes pretty close. The only Unix source that Linus might have based it on was Andy Tannenbaum's Minix, and that's certainly nothing like the original Unix. As far as I can remember, BSD Unix is also entirely rewritten (albeit gradually) from the original AT&T Unix too.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
I personally prefer Python for most things, but right at the moment I'm getting paid (lavishly) to write stuff in ActiveState's port of Perl to Windows (bletch). It's actually not that bad, but the language to my eyes is terrible---full of inconsistencies. However, this is an artifact of how Perl has evolved---as Larry Wall said, "Whatever you're looking for, Perl's got it, unless you're looking for consistency." The nice thing about Perl is you can do anything in it any way you want---"there's more than one way to do it". The nice thing about Python is that you can do anything in it and it's usually easy to see the right way of doing it. Python code is an order of magnitude easier to maintain than Perl code, but for many applications (such as text processing, where Perl really shines) the equivalent Perl program is shorter and more quickly written.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
I would never do any work on *BSD, because the BSD license allows a company to make the code proprietory. I'm certainly not going to write code that will allow a company such as Apple or M$ to get rich without giving anything back to the community. [And yes, I know my mail address is @gnu.org.:)]
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Slashdot Mirror
There were rumours flying around a while ago that open-source Radeon 8500 drivers would be appearing. I'm therefore sad to see that ATi have decided that closed source drivers are the way forward. I don't see any reason to promote this on Slashdot, or to consider this in any way beneficial for the open source community; remember, closed-source Linux drivers are not support, they're marketing. Thanks, ATi, I'll be buying my graphics hardware elsewhere in the future.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Not here it doesn't. I'm running 2.4.0-test9-pre7 with the reiserfs patches, and I've just happily built a six gig tar file on a reiserfs partition.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
And before you say "but the source is available", it isn't. The code in the tarball is just a wrapper around their "HAL" library.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
I used MainWin myself for a project last year, and didn't like it one little bit; it's very, very slow, incomplete, buggy, makes no use of any other toolkit, and requires daemons running in the background. Plus MainSoft's sales people are deeply annoying.
Office ported with MainWin would be unusable. Not that I would have recommended using MS products before, but I'd really recommend giving this one a wide berth.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
This is why you should always quote the text you're replying to. :)
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
For the same reason that Linux 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4 are all being worked on. Some people don't want to upgrade, because they've got custom drivers that only work on older versions, or they simply don't need the new features.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
No. Linux never contained any Minix code. It used the Minix filesystem for a while, but the code was reimplemented.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
I wonder how this is going to affect PostgreSQL and MySQL? It'll be interesting to see if it sucks developers away or not. I suspect it won't, as database specialists are few and far between...
And while I'm here, did Slashdot miss Redhat's GPL release of Source Navigator (Cygnus's IDE)? Hmmmm... I don't think I'm going to get any sleep tonight. :)
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
(or the uninitiated, that's the Usenet Death Penalty; cutting Deja's Usenet feed. I don't like giving companies free advertising, so I definitely don't want Deja inserting links to products from the text of my articles.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
No, it's not (the suite you're thinking of is Wind/U); neither is it built over MainWin or WINE. It would be even slower if that were the case.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
I'm pro-Monarchy, but only 'cos they make a nice tourist attraction.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
There's the odd vertical one like PicoBSD, but effectively Free/Open/NetBSD serve the same purpose as Redhat/Debian/SuSE/Slackware Linux. Different Linux distros are about as different as different BSDs.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
As a long-time (hah!) Linux user, I finally got around to installing FreeBSD last night under VMware. The install procedure is lovely (although a loadlin-like way to start it from a DOS partition would be useful---it took me the normal hour to find a disk that worked!); nice quick setup installing over the emulated network. The kernel's configuration stuff is also very nice indeed. Being able to add multiple users at install time is useful, as is being able to edit the FTP login message and other stuff (although the editor they provide could be better). I'm definitely going to play around with it some more. However, the userspace tools suck badly---I've got to install GNU bash/textutils/fileutils etc. to make it usable.
(Incidentally, I don't see any Linux distro attributing all the BSD-licensed stuff in their advertisements...)
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
No, because that would negate the purpose of the GPL. If you want this, use the BSD license for your code. (The reason being that if you could relicense under a less restrictive license, you could just relicense it as Public Domain and do anything to it.) And yes, I think readline being GPL (rather than LGPL, which allows linking with non-GPL stuff) is ridiculous too.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
And I agree---FreeBSD isn't better or worse than Linux, it's just different. I'll try it myself at some point (I've done OpenBSD and NetBSD in the past).
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Linux comes pretty close. The only Unix source that Linus might have based it on was Andy Tannenbaum's Minix, and that's certainly nothing like the original Unix. As far as I can remember, BSD Unix is also entirely rewritten (albeit gradually) from the original AT&T Unix too.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Yep, I've got both an Amiga and a K6 Linux box on my desk. The best of both worlds.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS