For one, there's no attempt to provide a stable ABI for 3rd-party drivers, so users must contend with their video card not working after upgrading the kernel.
Same goes for all kinds of drivers, like VMware, OMFS for my Rio Karma, and some Wifi modules. The only accommodation has been the new userspace driver interface for low-performance devices... far too little too late.
The Sound architechture is a failure: Even with OSS fully deprecated there are still various sound servers the user must contend with, resulting in blocked audio output. It took ages to deprecate OSS and now ALSA is not working! This means that people cannot rely on calendar alarms, softphones and such. All audio output should be MIXED unless a special app jumps through well-defined hoops to get exclusive access, and telling people to buy the $70 multichannel sound card is not acceptable.
There is no active "Linux Compatible" trademark promotion for hardware vendors to use. How are end-users and retailers supposed to clue-in and make compatible purchases otherwise? Have the kernel devs even bothered to put a friendly and concise HCL online?
Like audio, Power Management is nine years behind Windows. Among other problems, where is the ability to have USB and FW drives automatically spin down when they're inactive? Oh wait, those aren't used in the server room...
The above list is by no means exhaustive, but it indicates (no, PROVES) that the kernel development model is hackneyed, lacking the concept of defined actors and use cases, and considers common end-user scenarios only capriciously. They've talked themselves into believing that user interfaces aren't their job at that level; that anything they toss down from the on-high server market will more than suffice for desktops, when nothing could be further from the truth.
When you buy windows, you pay for licensing the required codecs to play MP3 and video files.
Only if you buy Vista Ultimate or Home Premium $$$. All other Windows releases are limited to WMV support (not even DVD playback).
The "Ubuntu doesn't work" arguments here are terribly one-sided, and I'm sure Dell didn't promise those media options in the product literature. If those functions are to be assumed, then Mossberg better start hammering away at MS.
You should be recommending Easybuntu or preferably Medibuntu. With Medibuntu, you just switch on universe and mulitverse and restricted, copy/paste the Medibuntu source lines into the package manager, then install w32codecs and libdvdcss. Upgrades then won't cause your system to self destruct.
The system will work with multimedia at this point.
That leaves one remaining hurdle, the video driver for 3D games. I agree that Dell could have taken care of this detail, but what are they going to do when the kernel gets upgraded and the video goes *poof* ? Sounds like a tech support nightmare. Forgetting about games support seems acceptable for the time being.
I certainly won't argue with any of that, though I'd like to add that being such a huge demographic (or a stampede) Boomers expect to get what they want: house scraped-out and remodeled every 7 years, liposuctioned thighs, and carefully cultivated earthy christian/newage self image that's more of a consumer product itself than a belief system.
Highly relevant to this discussion and the topic of Boomers + computers + consumer state is the BBC series produced by Adam Curtis, The Century Of The Self. The second or third episode looks at how the first database-digested polls were used to develop a new (and today dominant) style of "values and lifestyles" marketing based on psychoanalysis and the ideas of Edward Bernays (Freud's nephew and a consultant for CIA black ops propaganda).
I had long thought that both the hippie/yippie thing, and the surge in the far-right evangelical movement, were both reactions to the coldness and dehumanizing effects of the White Flight: Urban whites fleeing close traditional communities into sparse, plastic-y car cultures. Viewing the Century Of The Self has added a new dimension to that understanding in terms of how formulaic and determined corporate America was in co-opting any movements that questioned material consumption.
You may consider buying a pre-installed Ubuntu system (or something that claims Linux compatibility). Less costly than a Mac, though IMO both types of systems are really worth it!
The easiest and safest course would be to shrink the NTFS partition from Windows, would it not?
Expecting Ubuntu to do it doesn't quite make sense when you think about it. The only time you really have to split partitions on a boot drive is when the other OS is already present. So... let that other OS (windows) handle the shrinking of its own filesystem. If this poses a difficulty, then it appears you are being limited by something that doesn't involve Ubuntu (which can manipulate Linux partitions just fine).
Here is my kinda-short answer: Linux is developed on the Internet, out in the open. Expanding out from that development process, are people with all levels of intermediate-expert knowledge who 99% encounter problems before you and write about their resolution... all on the Internet.
When I switched away from Windows I used both for a while, and I also supported commercial developer tools on both: I can not stress enough the stark difference between Googling a Windows system problem and a Linux system problem: The Windows discussions look like a bunch of people scratching their heads before petering-out 3/4 of the time. The Linux discussions look like problems getting actively resolved 9/10 of the time. The Windows discussions have a large degree of sympathy and 'shoulder-shrugging' while the Linux ones exude more confidence and stay resolution-focused (and succeed) far more often.
If you are considering switching, I recommend Kubuntu 7.04 or the 7.10 (beta which I am using now). 7.10 uses the Dolphin file manager by default, which addresses my last major peeve with KDE. I used to caution people against the k/ubuntu distros, but find the last couple releases very well-rounded. IMO all it needs are built-in firewall and VPN setup panels, and those can be installed easily. If you travel with a laptop, full drive encryption cannot be setup through the GUI (yet) but there are well-written Howtos that any person used to manual partitioning and formatting can follow.
Games are a snag, but Winehq and Crossover sites and their compatability databases will tell you what runs under Wine. I feel that 100% game compatibility is not worth the drawbacks of Windows.
OTOH if Linux seems too muddled or confusing (there is more 'anarchy' and choice than in the Windows world) then I wholeheartedly recommend my other OS, Mac OSX, which has a very simple-elegant UI, tons more low-level control available for a techie than Windows, more games than Linux, and is becoming popular on the desktop.
This is a service targeted at your ISPs and phone cos that have to be able to spy on you. When nasty business get becomes a huge job... outsource it to the one holding the most keys.
I'll describe this FOSS program in terms Slashdotters will grok:
* RSS feed reader - video feeds
* with built-in video player (multi-format, based on the excellent VLC)
* can do various protocols incl. bittorrent
* The Guide has a catalog of tons of free feeds, organized by topic
* You can add feeds without the Guide
* Can handle subscriptions representing keyword search on sites like Youtube
So, as iTunes podcast is a kind of RSS reader, Miro is like iTunes podcast that adds a nice guide of general Internet content and Bittorrent distribution. Projects needing low-cost transport of high-quality video are encouraged to recommend Miro as their "torrent viewer". That, and the Guide has a growing catalog of some beautiful HD video feeds (under the 'HD' section).
They recently changed the name from "Democracy Player" and the software maturity is what I would call v0.99 late beta or RC1.
OOXML is objectively horrible/unworkable as a "standard" and if Icaza's attitude is reflective of (or impacts) Novell's then IMO what little FOSS credibility and good standing Novell had will have vanished.
It seems Mono has become a non-starter and he needs another way to grab attention.
John Heasman, director of research at NGS Software, spent an hour and a half at the conference scaring the audience out of its wits with his descriptions of several techniques for using the memory space on PCI cards and other devices to load rootkits . Heasman has been at this particular task for some time now, and his work is in no way theoretical; these are working exploits. He's found methods for loading a rootkit onto a PCI device via the flashable ROM.
Firewire ports are hot-pluggable DMA with bus mastering. With the right program, any FW device plugged into your system can suck out the plaintext RAM contents (including your keys), install and run rootkits without even touching the disk, etc.
Physical memory acquisition over Firewire is a trendy tactic for snapshotting suspsect systems without the interference of malware. Recall that Firewire, which is basically a glorified DMA controller with a funky cable coming out of it, has presumptively unmediated access to physical memory; your CPU may initialize the Firewire peripheral, but it doesn't get between the peripheral and the memory controller.
I am seeing mention around the web that this kind of access can be done with a PCI card (plugging it into a live system??).
Why would they bother when the NSA can do it for them?
Guess who has been spying as a subcontractor? Verisign!
Welcome to MITM country.
The CALEA law covers data now, so virtually all of the USA Internet traffic can be effectively bugged, and there are no trustable third parties for SSL links. Where secure encryption is concerned, you are on your own.
Heh. The head of the IETF receives compensation from both Verisign and the NSA.
But you couldn't use Buddhist subset as an example that atheism is a "religion". And you could say the same about theism, though I believe the possible set of conditions under which a theist could be considered non-religious is far more limited.
It is not a big deal for me because I use just one client on a laptop. However, I would think that you could setup your clients to move gmail messages into one of your IMAP accounts.
NB: interestingly, secularism (atheism, agnosticism, etc.) is the third largest "religion" in the world, having 1.1 billion "members", which is more than Catholicism, by far the largest Christian denomination (half of the world's Christians are Catholics).
One shouldn't be so touchy about strawmen when being so quick to set one up yourself.
Neither theism nor atheism are religions by themselves. A comprehensive belief system may even be atheist and a religion if it requires faith in something that cannot measured or falsified (Buddhism, New Age-ism and such).
The main points (in major summation) to most religions are: Be nice, and worship X deity. Only the former really matters.
No, the main point of most religions is to habituate people to credulity, and build an identity-group that will selectively drop critical thinking in response to learned religious invocations and icons. The practice has all kinds of side-effects: the main ones being that its a very convenient shield for authority against investigations and general inquisitiveness, and allows those authorities to increase their standing by converting their incorrect/unverifiable pronouncements, neglect and misdeeds into "deep meaning" and "the will of god".
Unlike irreligious/rationalist world views that go awry, the big lies of religion more often perpetuate themselves for millennia because their central claims revolve around what is undetectable by definition.
2) MS is actually helping Mono develop Silverlight for Linux Link [sdtimes.com]
Which MS will toss aside like old underwear as soon as Adobe tanks.
Why should the FOSS community care about receiving the great blessing of a me-too format with zero market share? That isn't helpful. MS Office for Linux perhaps, but not this old anticompetitive tactic of theirs.
If you're willing to spend money for seamless integration re: deployment, decomentation and process tools then you should look at IBM's Websphere Application Developer, based on Eclipse.
All this comparing top-end editions of VS with free Eclipse is misleading, IMO.
Software As Service also cuts to the core of personal computing itself. The whole idea and success behind PCs is that if you and your cohorts could get them on your desks, then you could finally route around the damage that is the centralized MIS dept. mainframe culture. The latter were rarely interested in handling your data in an accurate or timely manner, and it got so extreme that even SneakerNet became popular in the 1980s.
Now we are seeing centralization of a different sort, where the mainframes and admins don't even reside in your organization. No thanks!
But there's much more to it than that (see link above): You need a number of disciplines and structures in order to behave like a stable platform on PCs. If users don't see that consistency, and app developers aren't given a nurturing starting point (like Apple's XCode and ADC), and there is no clearcut way to distribute apps independently, then there will be a lack of top-notch applications to draw users to the OS.
Because we are not having this and many other discussions around LSB, because LSB isn't targeted by app devs, the software genre we fuzzily call 'Linux' just isn't a real computing platform. At least not one that is meaningful non-systems geeks, which is why the Linux genre tends to be only popular with sysadmins and system hackers. Users and the app devs that cater to them are still repelled.
Slashdot Mirror
The above list is by no means exhaustive, but it indicates (no, PROVES) that the kernel development model is hackneyed, lacking the concept of defined actors and use cases, and considers common end-user scenarios only capriciously. They've talked themselves into believing that user interfaces aren't their job at that level; that anything they toss down from the on-high server market will more than suffice for desktops, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Only if you buy Vista Ultimate or Home Premium $$$. All other Windows releases are limited to WMV support (not even DVD playback).
The "Ubuntu doesn't work" arguments here are terribly one-sided, and I'm sure Dell didn't promise those media options in the product literature. If those functions are to be assumed, then Mossberg better start hammering away at MS.
http://mjg59.livejournal.com/77440.html
You should be recommending Easybuntu or preferably Medibuntu. With Medibuntu, you just switch on universe and mulitverse and restricted, copy/paste the Medibuntu source lines into the package manager, then install w32codecs and libdvdcss. Upgrades then won't cause your system to self destruct.
The system will work with multimedia at this point.
That leaves one remaining hurdle, the video driver for 3D games. I agree that Dell could have taken care of this detail, but what are they going to do when the kernel gets upgraded and the video goes *poof* ? Sounds like a tech support nightmare. Forgetting about games support seems acceptable for the time being.
I certainly won't argue with any of that, though I'd like to add that being such a huge demographic (or a stampede) Boomers expect to get what they want: house scraped-out and remodeled every 7 years, liposuctioned thighs, and carefully cultivated earthy christian/newage self image that's more of a consumer product itself than a belief system.
Highly relevant to this discussion and the topic of Boomers + computers + consumer state is the BBC series produced by Adam Curtis, The Century Of The Self. The second or third episode looks at how the first database-digested polls were used to develop a new (and today dominant) style of "values and lifestyles" marketing based on psychoanalysis and the ideas of Edward Bernays (Freud's nephew and a consultant for CIA black ops propaganda).
I had long thought that both the hippie/yippie thing, and the surge in the far-right evangelical movement, were both reactions to the coldness and dehumanizing effects of the White Flight: Urban whites fleeing close traditional communities into sparse, plastic-y car cultures. Viewing the Century Of The Self has added a new dimension to that understanding in terms of how formulaic and determined corporate America was in co-opting any movements that questioned material consumption.
http://www.archive.org/details/AdaCurtisCenturyoftheSelf_0
http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart2of4
http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart3of4
http://www.archive.org/details/AdamCurtisCenturyoftheSelfPart4of4_0
I use and like both Kubuntu and OS X.
You may consider buying a pre-installed Ubuntu system (or something that claims Linux compatibility). Less costly than a Mac, though IMO both types of systems are really worth it!
Some Linux system vendors:
Dell
HP
System76
Emperor Linux
The easiest and safest course would be to shrink the NTFS partition from Windows, would it not?
Expecting Ubuntu to do it doesn't quite make sense when you think about it. The only time you really have to split partitions on a boot drive is when the other OS is already present. So... let that other OS (windows) handle the shrinking of its own filesystem. If this poses a difficulty, then it appears you are being limited by something that doesn't involve Ubuntu (which can manipulate Linux partitions just fine).
Here is my kinda-short answer: Linux is developed on the Internet, out in the open. Expanding out from that development process, are people with all levels of intermediate-expert knowledge who 99% encounter problems before you and write about their resolution... all on the Internet.
When I switched away from Windows I used both for a while, and I also supported commercial developer tools on both: I can not stress enough the stark difference between Googling a Windows system problem and a Linux system problem: The Windows discussions look like a bunch of people scratching their heads before petering-out 3/4 of the time. The Linux discussions look like problems getting actively resolved 9/10 of the time. The Windows discussions have a large degree of sympathy and 'shoulder-shrugging' while the Linux ones exude more confidence and stay resolution-focused (and succeed) far more often.
If you are considering switching, I recommend Kubuntu 7.04 or the 7.10 (beta which I am using now). 7.10 uses the Dolphin file manager by default, which addresses my last major peeve with KDE. I used to caution people against the k/ubuntu distros, but find the last couple releases very well-rounded. IMO all it needs are built-in firewall and VPN setup panels, and those can be installed easily. If you travel with a laptop, full drive encryption cannot be setup through the GUI (yet) but there are well-written Howtos that any person used to manual partitioning and formatting can follow.
Games are a snag, but Winehq and Crossover sites and their compatability databases will tell you what runs under Wine. I feel that 100% game compatibility is not worth the drawbacks of Windows.
OTOH if Linux seems too muddled or confusing (there is more 'anarchy' and choice than in the Windows world) then I wholeheartedly recommend my other OS, Mac OSX, which has a very simple-elegant UI, tons more low-level control available for a techie than Windows, more games than Linux, and is becoming popular on the desktop.
Then you have someone at Verisign (or some other trusted provider) who can read all of the worlds sensitive data.
And they actually do. Verisign now does for-hire intercept service. And CALEA has just been expanded to cover data links, not just voice:
http://www.verisign.com/products-services/communications-services/connectivity-and-interoperability-services/calea-compliance/lawful-interception/index.html
This is a service targeted at your ISPs and phone cos that have to be able to spy on you. When nasty business get becomes a huge job... outsource it to the one holding the most keys.
PGP, anyone?!
And that statement fits so well with your sig line. :-)
...then try out Miro.
http://getmiro.org/
I'll describe this FOSS program in terms Slashdotters will grok:
* RSS feed reader - video feeds
* with built-in video player (multi-format, based on the excellent VLC)
* can do various protocols incl. bittorrent
* The Guide has a catalog of tons of free feeds, organized by topic
* You can add feeds without the Guide
* Can handle subscriptions representing keyword search on sites like Youtube
So, as iTunes podcast is a kind of RSS reader, Miro is like iTunes podcast that adds a nice guide of general Internet content and Bittorrent distribution. Projects needing low-cost transport of high-quality video are encouraged to recommend Miro as their "torrent viewer". That, and the Guide has a growing catalog of some beautiful HD video feeds (under the 'HD' section).
They recently changed the name from "Democracy Player" and the software maturity is what I would call v0.99 late beta or RC1.
Icaza is a thoroughgoing Microsoft shill.
OOXML is objectively horrible/unworkable as a "standard" and if Icaza's attitude is reflective of (or impacts) Novell's then IMO what little FOSS credibility and good standing Novell had will have vanished.
It seems Mono has become a non-starter and he needs another way to grab attention.
re: live RAM acquisition - http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=291981&cid= 20526915
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/columnItem/0
Discovery of the FW exploit from several years ago.
Recent commentary:
I am seeing mention around the web that this kind of access can be done with a PCI card (plugging it into a live system??).
Why would they bother when the NSA can do it for them?
Guess who has been spying as a subcontractor? Verisign!
Welcome to MITM country.
The CALEA law covers data now, so virtually all of the USA Internet traffic can be effectively bugged, and there are no trustable third parties for SSL links. Where secure encryption is concerned, you are on your own.
Heh. The head of the IETF receives compensation from both Verisign and the NSA.
But you couldn't use Buddhist subset as an example that atheism is a "religion". And you could say the same about theism, though I believe the possible set of conditions under which a theist could be considered non-religious is far more limited.
It is not a big deal for me because I use just one client on a laptop. However, I would think that you could setup your clients to move gmail messages into one of your IMAP accounts.
One shouldn't be so touchy about strawmen when being so quick to set one up yourself.
Neither theism nor atheism are religions by themselves. A comprehensive belief system may even be atheist and a religion if it requires faith in something that cannot measured or falsified (Buddhism, New Age-ism and such).
No, the main point of most religions is to habituate people to credulity, and build an identity-group that will selectively drop critical thinking in response to learned religious invocations and icons. The practice has all kinds of side-effects: the main ones being that its a very convenient shield for authority against investigations and general inquisitiveness, and allows those authorities to increase their standing by converting their incorrect/unverifiable pronouncements, neglect and misdeeds into "deep meaning" and "the will of god".
Unlike irreligious/rationalist world views that go awry, the big lies of religion more often perpetuate themselves for millennia because their central claims revolve around what is undetectable by definition.
...something you have to pay for with Yahoo. Perhaps you are the only one on Slashdot who didn't check for POP3 in GMail.
Which MS will toss aside like old underwear as soon as Adobe tanks.
Why should the FOSS community care about receiving the great blessing of a me-too format with zero market share? That isn't helpful. MS Office for Linux perhaps, but not this old anticompetitive tactic of theirs.
If you're willing to spend money for seamless integration re: deployment, decomentation and process tools then you should look at IBM's Websphere Application Developer, based on Eclipse.
All this comparing top-end editions of VS with free Eclipse is misleading, IMO.
That is what LinuxMCE does. First you install Ubuntu, then you run a program that installs and configures a whole suite of programs including MythTV.
The demo video on their site is impressive.
Software As Service also cuts to the core of personal computing itself. The whole idea and success behind PCs is that if you and your cohorts could get them on your desks, then you could finally route around the damage that is the centralized MIS dept. mainframe culture. The latter were rarely interested in handling your data in an accurate or timely manner, and it got so extreme that even SneakerNet became popular in the 1980s.
Now we are seeing centralization of a different sort, where the mainframes and admins don't even reside in your organization. No thanks!
I agree that the community needs a good HCL.
But there's much more to it than that (see link above): You need a number of disciplines and structures in order to behave like a stable platform on PCs. If users don't see that consistency, and app developers aren't given a nurturing starting point (like Apple's XCode and ADC), and there is no clearcut way to distribute apps independently, then there will be a lack of top-notch applications to draw users to the OS.
Because we are not having this and many other discussions around LSB, because LSB isn't targeted by app devs, the software genre we fuzzily call 'Linux' just isn't a real computing platform. At least not one that is meaningful non-systems geeks, which is why the Linux genre tends to be only popular with sysadmins and system hackers. Users and the app devs that cater to them are still repelled.