Various SPEC benchmarks should emulate a desktop, CAD workstation, server, game etc computers, and the SPEC results should always be summarized as SPEC(x,y,z,w...) where each of those variables corresponds to the different applications emulated. A game machine uses the CPU in a very different way than a server.. more IO, less task switching. While CAD users compare CPUs for their own applications and do not need other numbers that show the performance for games, servers etc, these values cannot be united either because that will be too general then.
Subsequent versions could go up to 4GB or even 8. None of my Linux installations along with DB2, oracle, websphere, KDE3, unreal tournament and quake2 etc have taken over 4GBs. A one-drive laptop could still sell.
And then, they could plop in 4 of these SCSI drives in one laptop. The price will go up but only one drive at a time would be used, still a saving.
Laptop for sale: Transmeta 800MHz, 256MB SDRAM, 1.5GB Hdd, Debian Linux, CD/DVD player, ATI 3d card, 12hour battery life. $750.
I can see such a product coming soon and taking the markets like a storm. Give or take the Transmeta speed or the OS, such a system is currently in demand by people who have been putting off buying a laptop till now, or the people who have a Pentium2 or less now.
One of these companies one of these days will roll out something like this, others will see success and follow suit. Thats my thinking anyway
Performance computing has shrunken so much, theres no longer a need to keep mainframes around. That is pretty sad for the mighty Big Science history of the computers. Small ubiquitious computers kill the aura and the curiosity into these very complex machines, something that the stereotype of huge powerful computers and a supporting team of geeks created.
Sad to see we might not have a completely different architecture of big computers from small, the way the S/360 S/390 Cray etc had. Now we will see farms of Athlon64s and feel good that theyre using the same linux kernel that the PDA in the pocket is using, but perhaps there is no mysterious underlying OS like the OS/390 with its own languages, programming and look like the AS/400. Big Science computer technicians will no longer be an elite group.
I wonder if someone is selling an S/360, I could start a mortgage for it! Porting DOOM to it should be very cool.
Even THAT deserves a mention in slashdot?
on
fvwm Turns Ten
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Nostalgically twm would be more cool. fvwm, fvwm2, fvwm95, icewm, sawfish are the 'other' window managers. The big ones are kde and gnome and friends.
So tonight I will celebrate by switching from icewm to fvwm for a day.
I used to try and program my Commodore 64. Now I sometimes develop for embedded applications. Its nice to go back to old game consoles which some people still use, and develop something for it. For our expertise, the 2600 is quite easy and a nice way to relax for embedded developers, who knows, maybe it would be incorporated into cell phones.
It would be nice to find programmable ROM cartriges for the 2600. It would be great to develop new-name games for it, like Matrix, TuxRacer.
Even a PC-XT 8086 can be used to host static webpages using Minix, I wonder if a serial protocol can be used for one of the connectors (joystick? expansion slot?) and static ROM-based http pages sent out on basic requests. That would be a world record. Possibly also a record for the most slashdottable site.
Another interesting idea is for some small company to develop gameboy-size atari 2600 pads with most of the games built in. Could even be incorporated into cell phones, now that I would buy.
SCO is not TRYING to convince everyone. Look!
on
SCO vs Linux.. Continued
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
They KNOW the community will come back with a backlash, and they KNOW their stocks will plummett, and will soon be killed as a company. Theyre only trying to convince dumber managers in companies so Linux sales are hurt.. thats ALL.
The whole point of SCO's efforts is obviously to damage consumer confidence in Linux. They can achieve this by:
(1) Taking a backlash from the community. The more Linux users pay attention, the more consumers might think this is a serious problem, and NOT buy Linux. The more we pay attention and talk about this fiasco, no matter what we say, we're helping SCO.
(2) Taking all their time and NOT revealing what code has been copied. They're doing just that, but Novell might spoil the party.
(3) Dragging the judicial proceedings, this should be squashed, but they're probably being paid well to fight long, by M$
(4) Releasing statements in a knowledgeable and convincing manner. This is what we have to pick apart for the consumers to see.. that they (SCO) really have nothing on them. Novell is helping us because they're desperate to get married to opensource communities like IBM, but Sun will stay quite for a while, possibly with SGI. Their UNIX offerings might be taken up by shaky consumers after all.
I find it interesting how many people are paying attention to this. To this end, SCO is winning, by shaking up everything, so much talk, so many comments in slashdot and newsforge and elsewhere. Licensing issues have NEVER been so exciting for geeks.
You're right. Say some developer pasted code into the kernel, Linus unknowingly approved and it shipped in millions of systems and distros. There will be a new legal battleground with Linus denying the knowledge, the developer hiding in a bush and SCO trying to hold responsible not just Linus but EVERYONE along the chain including RedHat and IBM, their distributers, users and their dogs.
Of course the chances of this is slimmer in Linux than other OSes, Linux is more audited than other UNIXen, and Microsoft. It would be great if Microsoft had to release their sources for auditing someone found Linux code in there, and posted the news on slashdot.
$6? Wow Microsoft has bought so much of SCOs stocks. This figure certainly doesnt include SCOs own execs' stocks, they all must have suitcases of cash in their car trunks, unmarked bills.
Youre right. Although a small bit of code or algorithm is something I could make in an hour or so, the silly patent laws created trouble for UNIX and will now create trouble here. Imagine a certain way to shuffle swap space, some optimised way. An engineer at AT&T might have come up with it, and much later, a geek working on kernel version 2.3 might have come up with the same optimised algorithm, but it can be shown the algorithms are the same and POP goes the weasel.
I dont know where the line stands... ascii cmp of more than 5 nonblank lines?? can algorithms like the queue and bubble sort be patented? How about two consecutive machine codes??
Where the line SHOULD stand is a significant breakthrough.. that possibly wouldnt have happened elsewhere in the next 5 years. With such a description, Linux wins right there and even investors wouldnt get worried, but the legal landscape in USA anyway is too thorny for innovation.
At this point it seems Linus is being given too much credit. He holds the trademark to the Linux kernel, but a news blob a while ago mentioned SCO is not suing for something added to the kernel, but to the Operating System in general by the companies. This completely removes Linus, until this statement.
And then again, trying to comprehend what SCO is claiming, that someone somewhere along the line copied code to the Linux system, either kernel or glibc or some applications. Did other developers know about it? Unlikely.
If someone copied code, and he is NOT employed by Linus, can Linus be sued for it? This is of course assuming we're talking about the kernel.
Linus knows all this, and like most of us, knows what SCO is really up to and how all this will end. After this ordeal, Linux might lose a small section of its market, but confidence in Linux's license and code will soar. The next company would not be able to sue Linux for any significant damage, and will be turned down faster by the courts. In that sense, its good to have an imbecile like SCO testing the legal foundations (and strengthening) of Linux, rather than someone bigger, with a more damaging lawsuit.
If Linus reacts, the market will too. SCO used to be a heavyweight once, but investors are now looking at the reaction to see how much of a threat SCO really is. The reactions will determine Linux's market uptake by nervous companies in the short term, so apathy as well as the communitys strong backlash and support from IBM Novell Sun Open Group etc will ensure this Microsoft-funded project does minimal damage.
What I am personally interested in are the top executives of SCO right now, including McBride. They hold the knowledge of any possible 'deal' with Microsoft, and should any one of them step forward and spill the beans, I will stand back, watch Microsoft stocks plummet with lawsuits and love it. I am also interested in seeing who will really hire those top execs or even buy SCO after this ordeal. Certainly not IBM. Will McBride be a manager in a software company? will the other execs remove their employment at SCO from their resumes? Will they all quit the Linux/UNIX business and move to something else like legal assistance?
Some time ago, PakNet was the biggest ISP in Pakistan serving hundereds of thousands under ONE ip address... interestingly using Linux kernel version 1.3.x. I also remember every user had a shell account from which we could cat the/etc/passwd, which was not surprisingly humungous. For a while, BrainNet and PakNet were the only ISPs in Pakistan, and later ISPs could only connect to Paknet, and their single monolithic IP address. I remembed always being banned from IRC servers which were blocking users by their IP addresses. Talk about one huge NAT and this is the biggest Muslim country in the world.
And on this side, here in Toronto, Bell assigns a subnet of 8 IPs to every customer, including ones who need just one. 3 of those IPs are gateway, broadcast and 00 host, which leaves 5 IPs. two of them are assigned to the on-site router and off-site routers which are connected via DSL. Its one of the best examples of IP address waste, while the Chinese crave a personal, their very own IP address!
Theoretically all of the more than 4 billon IP addresses can be used, and it is VERY unlikely that the whole worlds population would be online. But the imbalance remains with the US holdin on to all the Oil and IP addresses. At least we can do something about one of them.
For one, theyre ancient UNIXes, and its more work to port them than it was for BSD4.4
Secondly people really have their eyes on the SysV, especially ports to sparc and intel. You can see how BSD4.4Lite's release helped compared to PDP-11's UNIX.
I think SCO could cease to exist, and the licensing terms might be nullified as a result. I dont know of the cancellation rules, but Novell could cancel that license contract, and probably would, to pull the rug under SCO completely. I dont know how much Novell cherishes their UNIX SYSV ownership, but if they're being dragged into Linux, they might as well slide in big time like IBM, throw everything they've got and become opensource evangelists, to gain full support of the community the way Sun did a long time ago with the Unix community by becoming a Unix company.
Nobody really needs proprietary UNIX anymore. Solaris, IBM and IRIX are practically giving it away just to sell their hardware, and freeing the code could do wonders to that company's image, their hardware sales and and application base, not to mention the number of eyeballs:). But then again none of this is guaranteed. People might just ignore the code release completely, while some pioneering group might pick it up and become yet another competition.
If Novell is thinking long term, they will certainly release as much of UNIX as they can, they're already trying to gain the support of Linux by releaseing so much software for free. Linux has so much partnerships now, it is becoming fast a hub for anti-Microsoft alliances. If theyre smart, they will create open standards to work with each other to create binary compatibility (or at least source), open protocols etc (remember LSB?)just to survive in the alliance, and thats bad news to Microsoft.
Novells the champ I suppose here, it will win enormous support form the Linux community on this issue if it can really torpedo SCO, but the big fish is Microsoft. Their link to SCO absolutely must be revealed, I think IBM Suse Redhat Novell and others will have an easy time suing Microsoft back on this if the connection is properly revealed.
This issue must be shut ASAP, because it might be causing jitters among ignorant corporate decision makers and consultants. People like Linus should come out to the public after SCO's claims have been squashed, to get the word out that Linux's license is robust and will not drown the way some other UNIXen did.
And finally it would make Novell a hero to release the whole UNIX under an opensource license, preferably GPL, since they're contemplating moving to Linux anyway. These guys have been really innovative for the Internet and the practically invented the LAN for the masses, they should be supported. Their support in these tough times shows the principles behind the free software movement are not simply financially motivated, but are based on ideals that UNIX users and developers anywhere in the world can relate to. Microsoft couldnt fight that.
Yeah I understand that. I started with slackware, used debian for years, and now back to SuSE and RedHat just becase I want to get used to popular server distros I might use in the market out there. Right now, I'd rather use knoppix (because its debian plus auto hardware detect) or slackware hack stuff.
There are practical obstacles and I can see that,but if this is an optional fee for a service that students can choose, I fully support it. If I can easily and readily get my favorite songs on good quality MP3s, I'd rather pay $2 for it that browse peoples computers for 20 minutes.
So firstly they have to make it an optional fee not hidden in tuition fees. Secondly, they must find ways to block campus p2p, so one subscriber cannot spill the goods. Perhaps smart routers that block p2p ports, and tcp with such headers etc? of ALL known p2p programs?
Attempted answers to the query:
And that renders Microsoft obsolete how, exactly?
Apache over IIS, Openoffice over MSOffice, samba over SMB, Sendmail over exchange. This is not an exhaustive list.
Every study that has directly compared performance of an NT-line based system and the competing Linux-based system of the day has shown NT to be faster, no matter whether tested by Microsoft, by Linux gurus, or by third parties. Furthermore, aside from hardware failures, 2000 SP 3 and XP are as solid as Linux, i.e. they simply don't crash. Gone are the days of Win9x my friend!
I've never known of such a study by a linux guru, I can testify about the performance and stability of both NT and Linux from experience. I'm an MCSE and have installed Windows 2000 servers and workstations at various places. Problems include corruption in the kernel, filesystem check sometimes not succeeding, excessive swapping even on a machine with 512MB ram, Internet services taking too much memory, and the occasional system freezing up. This is on dell hardware with the latest service pack (3), signed drivers and patched applications: SQL 2000, IE6, IIS, Exchange.
On a side note: I have used FreeBSD on two servers, Solaris on one and Linux on one at various customer locations with uptimes that beat the best of Windows2000 by a scale of 4. In case of the BSD servers, they're installed on Pentium 133 with 64mb ram, and run apache + php, qmail with over 120 imap users, samba, postgresql, iptables firewalls, ipsec VPNs, secondary DNS, DHCP, and the tomcat server on one of them. Since installation, I had to restart them twice to replace the kernels, and since have never had a problem. The Linux server is RedHat on a pentium 200 with 32MB ram, and runs similar services, but has crashed once, and its kernel was replaced about 6 months ago. The Windows 2000 servers were installed first on Pentium II with 128 MB ram computers that were later upgraded to Pentium III with 256 MB ram.
Believe me, I hope so, but I've no evidence to support that conclusion. Do you have a link?
Heres one: http://www.etaiwannews.com/Business/2003/03/06/104 6913182.htm
And then there are IDC's own reports:
http://www.idc.com/en_US/search/viewSearchRes.jhtm l?&_requestid=17236
that claim the Linux trend is better than Windows.
And then theres my own experience. I've seen public workstations, schools and home networks switched to Linux.
I stand corrected in some facts noted above, but some clarifications:
"Monolithic" kernel: NT kernel is object based ("everything is an object" [file, ACL, semaphore, process, etc.] VS Unix "everything is a file"), mach-style modular and (as of W2K) fully reentrant. Allows for multiple independent subsystem operation (e.g. Win32 and OS2/1.0 and POSIX); significantly more advanced than (e.g.) Linux and BSD.
The NT kernel is certainly modular and not monolithic in the strict sense of the word, but far from the file-based seperation, the seperation in NT is in the API. The module interface APIs in Linux is clearly defined, but it has gotten too complicated and not fully revealed in NT... think of VXD drivers vs WDM vs vendors trying to build their own interfaces by replacing some DLLs (older drivers).
But the problem is somewhat alleviated by use of COM interface separation
I wouldnt call that alleviation. Developing in a single API all the way through is efficient as well as more stable by virtue of the fact that there are fewer API interfaces to juggle in system RAM. take MFC, then GDI then lower win32 layers, while higher layers might include QT, visualbasic and others. When you get a BSOD citing kernel32, this can come from too many sources, comparing that with the crash dump of say Linux, the APIs are radically simplified, at least in numbers. Replacing glibc2 or the kernel is usually enough.
"Many eyes" philosophy of open source: agreed, in theory this should render Microsoft obsolete, in practice it has merely spurred Microsoft to create a better product
It is rendering Microsoft obsolete. Our company buys laptops for employees and promptly replaces the Windows XP with 2000 before handing them out. Too many people are still using Win98 because others are bloatware and taking their time to mature up; I wouldnt recommend Windows 2003 to anyone in the next 2 years.
Theoretically Microsoft is shaping up with the intro of.NET, better COM and integration, much improved Active Directory and of course stability. But both in performance and stability, Microsoft remains defeated, and lives on providing good fodder news to investors and using the win32 software base. The trend of Linux is quite positive in numbers.
I could be wrong with the above comments. Theyre just my opinions dumped.
It's fairly easy to replicate the "sweaty hands" scent.
(1) Do you think so? Try it without actually using sweaty hands.
(2) fresh banknotes too have a certain smell associated with it, either from its ink or paper. Thats what I'm talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Various SPEC benchmarks should emulate a desktop, CAD workstation, server, game etc computers, and the SPEC results should always be summarized as SPEC(x,y,z,w...) where each of those variables corresponds to the different applications emulated. A game machine uses the CPU in a very different way than a server.. more IO, less task switching. While CAD users compare CPUs for their own applications and do not need other numbers that show the performance for games, servers etc, these values cannot be united either because that will be too general then.
Subsequent versions could go up to 4GB or even 8. None of my Linux installations along with DB2, oracle, websphere, KDE3, unreal tournament and quake2 etc have taken over 4GBs. A one-drive laptop could still sell.
And then, they could plop in 4 of these SCSI drives in one laptop. The price will go up but only one drive at a time would be used, still a saving.
Laptop for sale:
Transmeta 800MHz, 256MB SDRAM, 1.5GB Hdd, Debian Linux, CD/DVD player, ATI 3d card, 12hour battery life. $750.
I can see such a product coming soon and taking the markets like a storm. Give or take the Transmeta speed or the OS, such a system is currently in demand by people who have been putting off buying a laptop till now, or the people who have a Pentium2 or less now.
One of these companies one of these days will roll out something like this, others will see success and follow suit. Thats my thinking anyway
Smaller drives should cut energy uptake. With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.
Even PDAs will benefit, since some people that are now using microdrives with PCMCIA cards see the battery go down in 2 hours or less.
I would buy a video camera that can save to removeable drives like these after a DivX or XVid encoding, even at a higher pricetag.
Performance computing has shrunken so much, theres no longer a need to keep mainframes around. That is pretty sad for the mighty Big Science history of the computers. Small ubiquitious computers kill the aura and the curiosity into these very complex machines, something that the stereotype of huge powerful computers and a supporting team of geeks created.
Sad to see we might not have a completely different architecture of big computers from small, the way the S/360 S/390 Cray etc had. Now we will see farms of Athlon64s and feel good that theyre using the same linux kernel that the PDA in the pocket is using, but perhaps there is no mysterious underlying OS like the OS/390 with its own languages, programming and look like the AS/400. Big Science computer technicians will no longer be an elite group.
I wonder if someone is selling an S/360, I could start a mortgage for it! Porting DOOM to it should be very cool.
Nostalgically twm would be more cool. fvwm, fvwm2, fvwm95, icewm, sawfish are the 'other' window managers. The big ones are kde and gnome and friends.
So tonight I will celebrate by switching from icewm to fvwm for a day.
A little nostalgia is fine, any more is not?
I used to try and program my Commodore 64. Now I sometimes develop for embedded applications. Its nice to go back to old game consoles which some people still use, and develop something for it. For our expertise, the 2600 is quite easy and a nice way to relax for embedded developers, who knows, maybe it would be incorporated into cell phones.
It would be nice to find programmable ROM cartriges for the 2600. It would be great to develop new-name games for it, like Matrix, TuxRacer.
Even a PC-XT 8086 can be used to host static webpages using Minix, I wonder if a serial protocol can be used for one of the connectors (joystick? expansion slot?) and static ROM-based http pages sent out on basic requests. That would be a world record. Possibly also a record for the most slashdottable site.
Another interesting idea is for some small company to develop gameboy-size atari 2600 pads with most of the games built in. Could even be incorporated into cell phones, now that I would buy.
They KNOW the community will come back with a backlash, and they KNOW their stocks will plummett, and will soon be killed as a company. Theyre only trying to convince dumber managers in companies so Linux sales are hurt.. thats ALL.
The whole point of SCO's efforts is obviously to damage consumer confidence in Linux. They can achieve this by:
(1) Taking a backlash from the community. The more Linux users pay attention, the more consumers might think this is a serious problem, and NOT buy Linux. The more we pay attention and talk about this fiasco, no matter what we say, we're helping SCO.
(2) Taking all their time and NOT revealing what code has been copied. They're doing just that, but Novell might spoil the party.
(3) Dragging the judicial proceedings, this should be squashed, but they're probably being paid well to fight long, by M$
(4) Releasing statements in a knowledgeable and convincing manner. This is what we have to pick apart for the consumers to see.. that they (SCO) really have nothing on them. Novell is helping us because they're desperate to get married to opensource communities like IBM, but Sun will stay quite for a while, possibly with SGI. Their UNIX offerings might be taken up by shaky consumers after all.
I find it interesting how many people are paying attention to this. To this end, SCO is winning, by shaking up everything, so much talk, so many comments in slashdot and newsforge and elsewhere. Licensing issues have NEVER been so exciting for geeks.
You're right. Say some developer pasted code into the kernel, Linus unknowingly approved and it shipped in millions of systems and distros. There will be a new legal battleground with Linus denying the knowledge, the developer hiding in a bush and SCO trying to hold responsible not just Linus but EVERYONE along the chain including RedHat and IBM, their distributers, users and their dogs.
Of course the chances of this is slimmer in Linux than other OSes, Linux is more audited than other UNIXen, and Microsoft. It would be great if Microsoft had to release their sources for auditing someone found Linux code in there, and posted the news on slashdot.
$6? Wow Microsoft has bought so much of SCOs stocks. This figure certainly doesnt include SCOs own execs' stocks, they all must have suitcases of cash in their car trunks, unmarked bills.
Youre right. Although a small bit of code or algorithm is something I could make in an hour or so, the silly patent laws created trouble for UNIX and will now create trouble here. Imagine a certain way to shuffle swap space, some optimised way. An engineer at AT&T might have come up with it, and much later, a geek working on kernel version 2.3 might have come up with the same optimised algorithm, but it can be shown the algorithms are the same and POP goes the weasel.
I dont know where the line stands... ascii cmp of more than 5 nonblank lines?? can algorithms like the queue and bubble sort be patented? How about two consecutive machine codes??
Where the line SHOULD stand is a significant breakthrough.. that possibly wouldnt have happened elsewhere in the next 5 years. With such a description, Linux wins right there and even investors wouldnt get worried, but the legal landscape in USA anyway is too thorny for innovation.
At this point it seems Linus is being given too much credit. He holds the trademark to the Linux kernel, but a news blob a while ago mentioned SCO is not suing for something added to the kernel, but to the Operating System in general by the companies. This completely removes Linus, until this statement.
And then again, trying to comprehend what SCO is claiming, that someone somewhere along the line copied code to the Linux system, either kernel or glibc or some applications. Did other developers know about it? Unlikely.
If someone copied code, and he is NOT employed by Linus, can Linus be sued for it? This is of course assuming we're talking about the kernel.
Linus knows all this, and like most of us, knows what SCO is really up to and how all this will end. After this ordeal, Linux might lose a small section of its market, but confidence in Linux's license and code will soar. The next company would not be able to sue Linux for any significant damage, and will be turned down faster by the courts. In that sense, its good to have an imbecile like SCO testing the legal foundations (and strengthening) of Linux, rather than someone bigger, with a more damaging lawsuit.
If Linus reacts, the market will too. SCO used to be a heavyweight once, but investors are now looking at the reaction to see how much of a threat SCO really is. The reactions will determine Linux's market uptake by nervous companies in the short term, so apathy as well as the communitys strong backlash and support from IBM Novell Sun Open Group etc will ensure this Microsoft-funded project does minimal damage.
What I am personally interested in are the top executives of SCO right now, including McBride. They hold the knowledge of any possible 'deal' with Microsoft, and should any one of them step forward and spill the beans, I will stand back, watch Microsoft stocks plummet with lawsuits and love it. I am also interested in seeing who will really hire those top execs or even buy SCO after this ordeal. Certainly not IBM. Will McBride be a manager in a software company? will the other execs remove their employment at SCO from their resumes? Will they all quit the Linux/UNIX business and move to something else like legal assistance?
Some time ago, PakNet was the biggest ISP in Pakistan serving hundereds of thousands under ONE ip address... interestingly using Linux kernel version 1.3.x. I also remember every user had a shell account from which we could cat the
And on this side, here in Toronto, Bell assigns a subnet of 8 IPs to every customer, including ones who need just one. 3 of those IPs are gateway, broadcast and 00 host, which leaves 5 IPs. two of them are assigned to the on-site router and off-site routers which are connected via DSL. Its one of the best examples of IP address waste, while the Chinese crave a personal, their very own IP address!
Theoretically all of the more than 4 billon IP addresses can be used, and it is VERY unlikely that the whole worlds population would be online. But the imbalance remains with the US holdin on to all the Oil and IP addresses. At least we can do something about one of them.
For one, theyre ancient UNIXes, and its more work to port them than it was for BSD4.4
Secondly people really have their eyes on the SysV, especially ports to sparc and intel. You can see how BSD4.4Lite's release helped compared to PDP-11's UNIX.
I think SCO could cease to exist, and the licensing terms might be nullified as a result. I dont know of the cancellation rules, but Novell could cancel that license contract, and probably would, to pull the rug under SCO completely. I dont know how much Novell cherishes their UNIX SYSV ownership, but if they're being dragged into Linux, they might as well slide in big time like IBM, throw everything they've got and become opensource evangelists, to gain full support of the community the way Sun did a long time ago with the Unix community by becoming a Unix company.
Nobody really needs proprietary UNIX anymore. Solaris, IBM and IRIX are practically giving it away just to sell their hardware, and freeing the code could do wonders to that company's image, their hardware sales and and application base, not to mention the number of eyeballs
If Novell is thinking long term, they will certainly release as much of UNIX as they can, they're already trying to gain the support of Linux by releaseing so much software for free. Linux has so much partnerships now, it is becoming fast a hub for anti-Microsoft alliances. If theyre smart, they will create open standards to work with each other to create binary compatibility (or at least source), open protocols etc (remember LSB?)just to survive in the alliance, and thats bad news to Microsoft.
Novells the champ I suppose here, it will win enormous support form the Linux community on this issue if it can really torpedo SCO, but the big fish is Microsoft. Their link to SCO absolutely must be revealed, I think IBM Suse Redhat Novell and others will have an easy time suing Microsoft back on this if the connection is properly revealed.
This issue must be shut ASAP, because it might be causing jitters among ignorant corporate decision makers and consultants. People like Linus should come out to the public after SCO's claims have been squashed, to get the word out that Linux's license is robust and will not drown the way some other UNIXen did.
And finally it would make Novell a hero to release the whole UNIX under an opensource license, preferably GPL, since they're contemplating moving to Linux anyway. These guys have been really innovative for the Internet and the practically invented the LAN for the masses, they should be supported. Their support in these tough times shows the principles behind the free software movement are not simply financially motivated, but are based on ideals that UNIX users and developers anywhere in the world can relate to. Microsoft couldnt fight that.
Yeah I understand that. I started with slackware, used debian for years, and now back to SuSE and RedHat just becase I want to get used to popular server distros I might use in the market out there. Right now, I'd rather use knoppix (because its debian plus auto hardware detect) or slackware hack stuff.
There are practical obstacles and I can see that
So firstly they have to make it an optional fee not hidden in tuition fees. Secondly, they must find ways to block campus p2p, so one subscriber cannot spill the goods. Perhaps smart routers that block p2p ports, and tcp with such headers etc? of ALL known p2p programs?
In theory I support it anyway.
What does debian have to do with mandrake?
Heres the link to compare:t ml?tag=dir
http://download.com.com/3101-2001-0-1.h
It has already beaten ICQ Pro.
Attempted answers to the query: And that renders Microsoft obsolete how, exactly? Apache over IIS, Openoffice over MSOffice, samba over SMB, Sendmail over exchange. This is not an exhaustive list. Every study that has directly compared performance of an NT-line based system and the competing Linux-based system of the day has shown NT to be faster, no matter whether tested by Microsoft, by Linux gurus, or by third parties. Furthermore, aside from hardware failures, 2000 SP 3 and XP are as solid as Linux, i.e. they simply don't crash. Gone are the days of Win9x my friend! I've never known of such a study by a linux guru, I can testify about the performance and stability of both NT and Linux from experience. I'm an MCSE and have installed Windows 2000 servers and workstations at various places. Problems include corruption in the kernel, filesystem check sometimes not succeeding, excessive swapping even on a machine with 512MB ram, Internet services taking too much memory, and the occasional system freezing up. This is on dell hardware with the latest service pack (3), signed drivers and patched applications: SQL 2000, IE6, IIS, Exchange. On a side note: I have used FreeBSD on two servers, Solaris on one and Linux on one at various customer locations with uptimes that beat the best of Windows2000 by a scale of 4. In case of the BSD servers, they're installed on Pentium 133 with 64mb ram, and run apache + php, qmail with over 120 imap users, samba, postgresql, iptables firewalls, ipsec VPNs, secondary DNS, DHCP, and the tomcat server on one of them. Since installation, I had to restart them twice to replace the kernels, and since have never had a problem. The Linux server is RedHat on a pentium 200 with 32MB ram, and runs similar services, but has crashed once, and its kernel was replaced about 6 months ago. The Windows 2000 servers were installed first on Pentium II with 128 MB ram computers that were later upgraded to Pentium III with 256 MB ram. Believe me, I hope so, but I've no evidence to support that conclusion. Do you have a link? Heres one: http://www.etaiwannews.com/Business/2003/03/06/104 6913182.htm
And then there are IDC's own reports:
http://www.idc.com/en_US/search/viewSearchRes.jhtm l?&_requestid=17236
that claim the Linux trend is better than Windows.
And then theres my own experience. I've seen public workstations, schools and home networks switched to Linux.
I stand corrected in some facts noted above, but some clarifications: "Monolithic" kernel: NT kernel is object based ("everything is an object" [file, ACL, semaphore, process, etc.] VS Unix "everything is a file"), mach-style modular and (as of W2K) fully reentrant. Allows for multiple independent subsystem operation (e.g. Win32 and OS2/1.0 and POSIX); significantly more advanced than (e.g.) Linux and BSD. The NT kernel is certainly modular and not monolithic in the strict sense of the word, but far from the file-based seperation, the seperation in NT is in the API. The module interface APIs in Linux is clearly defined, but it has gotten too complicated and not fully revealed in NT... think of VXD drivers vs WDM vs vendors trying to build their own interfaces by replacing some DLLs (older drivers). But the problem is somewhat alleviated by use of COM interface separation I wouldnt call that alleviation. Developing in a single API all the way through is efficient as well as more stable by virtue of the fact that there are fewer API interfaces to juggle in system RAM. take MFC, then GDI then lower win32 layers, while higher layers might include QT, visualbasic and others. When you get a BSOD citing kernel32, this can come from too many sources, comparing that with the crash dump of say Linux, the APIs are radically simplified, at least in numbers. Replacing glibc2 or the kernel is usually enough. "Many eyes" philosophy of open source: agreed, in theory this should render Microsoft obsolete, in practice it has merely spurred Microsoft to create a better product It is rendering Microsoft obsolete. Our company buys laptops for employees and promptly replaces the Windows XP with 2000 before handing them out. Too many people are still using Win98 because others are bloatware and taking their time to mature up; I wouldnt recommend Windows 2003 to anyone in the next 2 years. Theoretically Microsoft is shaping up with the intro of .NET, better COM and integration, much improved Active Directory and of course stability. But both in performance and stability, Microsoft remains defeated, and lives on providing good fodder news to investors and using the win32 software base. The trend of Linux is quite positive in numbers.
I could be wrong with the above comments. Theyre just my opinions dumped.
It's fairly easy to replicate the "sweaty hands" scent. (1) Do you think so? Try it without actually using sweaty hands. (2) fresh banknotes too have a certain smell associated with it, either from its ink or paper. Thats what I'm talking about.