What I meant by that, when I said that I thought the FSF was justified in calling it GNU/Linux was this - for a long, long time, they've talked about developing HURD as the kernel for the GNU system.
When you look at the things that they've done, (the FSF) and see that they are still working on a kernel, it gives you the "big picture" of GNU work. The point of GNU was not to write a C compiler or a kick-ass editor or a bunch of binary utilities, even though they eventually did. The point was to build an entire system. With that in mind, when linux came along, and was GPL'd, they had a kernel, and a missing piece was suddenly there. Every other piece of software that they had written was meant to fit into the framework of the GNU system, and even though they didn't explicitly write linux in-house or through organized effort on the part of the FSF, it was a GPL'd piece of software that became part of the "system". And thus GNU/Linux. Because it's just not linux. Linux is a kernel, for chrissake! Without the rest of the GNU System (of which linux is a part) the kernel is unusable.
Frankly, not to be extreme (even though I am) but I think they'd be within their rights to call the whole damn thing the GNU System with no reference to "Linux". Why should the kernel get special treatment in naming? We don't call it GNU/ls even though the "ls" program is GPL'd. So why give Linux special consideration? It was for compromise I think.
I can't speak to the author of this article's particular intentions when they talked about how it would be better because it was OO (if it even IS), but...
It used to be that structured programming in the imperative paradigm was going to save us all and allow us to write the killer apps and progress in computer science. Then it was the functional/logic languages (like LISP from the functional camp and PROLOG from the logic camp) and these days, Object oriented programming is the flavor of the month. Look at the popularity of C++ on the MS platform, and the long hard push for java acceptance. Jeez, and your favorite languages like python and perl, well, if they didn't start off as having OO capabilities, they were certainly hastily added.
It's the flavor of the month, man. In 10-15 years, I'd expect the object oriented paradigm to be as popular as other passed computer science fads. Not that it won't be useful, it's just that eventually people will stop thinking of it as the silver bullet to slay any programming problem
New hardware support for linux and availability under linux is only positive in my mind. It shows that the OS is moving forward, and more than that, that it isn't just an OS for punk hackers like me.:)
Ever since I've heard that Mandrake and all those folks at VA have a wireless LAN I can't think about this type of thing without drooling all over myself. I've had extremely limited experience with cellular modems, all of which totally sucked. But I've heard that cards like this are quite good.
Of course the whole wireless thing does give more of a blatant angle on the privacy issue...I hope no one is under the illusion that they're going to have privacy when using these things. Unless of course they gpg their data.:)
This is very, very cool. The HURD is awesome, and I for one am going to be following it very closely as it develops.
For all of the people who are now going to bash the HURD as completely useless and still in development, keep in mind that linux was once at the point that the HURD currently is. It's in development, there are probably more things to be implemented than things that have already been implemented (although any developers feel free to jump in and comment at length about the status relative to the long term goals of the project) but the project is VERY cool.
It doesn't *compete* with linux in the way that you might think - it's sort of a UNIX, but it's based off of the Mach microkernel, which is a very different way of going about operating system design than your typical UNIX.
Let's face it, of course linux rocks, but in terms of operating system design concepts, linux really didn't change much, it just took ideas that were already out there and created an excellent implementation of said ideas. The HURD on the other hand is based on a different worldview of operating systems and has a lot of promise.
Besides, how bad can it be to have another choice for an operating system? You don't have to use Linux, BSD, Win95, or HURD, but it's good to know that the choice is out there. Personally, I don't know if I'm ready to join the HURD, but I'm watching the code, and I plan to jump in and contribute where I can.
And to all you people who say that the term GNU/Linux is a total travesty of fairness on the part of the FSF, the HURD is pretty much the last component of the GNU system that is needed. Whether they choose to call that GNU/HURD or just HURD is up to them, but if you look at the HURD in terms of the framework of GNU's work, it explains a lot about why Stallman wants to call Linux GNU/Linux. (And I agree with him)
What are the worst parts about programming with Motif? Honestly I've NEVER heard anything positive about it, I've never heard of somebody saying "Oh those Motif architects - they really knew what they were doing..."
Why does it suck so horrendously? All I know is GTK+, which I think is quite spiffy.
"Of all the several hundred or so apps out there that use the GTK library, they require either 1.0.x, 1.2.x, or 1.2.x-x blah blah blah."
Ever seen a lot of the KDE/Qt apps? They say, "Don't use such and such a version of Qt because it's not ready yet or the APIs are different" and so on. It's the same thing for Qt, it's just that there are probably a lot of GTK+ apps out there that haven't been updated yet. That's not the toolkits fault.
"Basically you need to install several different versions of GTK just to use the apps you want."
Bzzzt! Wrong! Just about any application worth using has been updated for the 1.2.x series, which has been out for quite a while. If it doesn't run with 1.2.x, then chances are you don't want to run it anyway.
"GTK is also one of the most bloated toolkits availible, and it is ugly"
I can't argue with your sense of aesthetics, since that's your choice, but you're wrong about it being bloated. I get the feeling that you're basing that entirely off of your theming argument - and I can tell you, you don't need anywhere near those requirements you listed, and you can stay away from 90% of the overhead if you just don't use pixmapped themes. The flexibility that pixmapped themes gives you is something you have to pay for. If you read some of the info on gtk.themes.org, you'd know this.
As fast as the tech market moves, I think one thing that linux has shown me, (through the long series of such-and-such company adopting linux, and so on) is that companies are sure good at dragging ass when they want to.
And they've got a lot of motivation to. Proclaiming the end of CDE and Motif and so on is not something that Triteal wants to hear.
One of the things that I've noticed about linux and GNU software seemingly "pushing things out of the way" is that generally, it happens in a spot where a company isn't *too* afraid of giving ground.
HP/UX, Solaris, and all those other UNIXen are still extremely entrenched in corporations. Just because linux does exist in companies, and just because people do use it, doesn't mean that people can go around proclaiminig "ding dong the witch is dead" spouting out that such and such extremely popular software package for UNIX is on the way out because of some free software replacement. Even for packages that are non-free, it takes a long time to get mindshare and get people using the software, and it can take just as long to get them out of it. That QT and GTK+ are making inroads is interesting, but that's quite different from seriously threatening the EXISTANCE of an alternative.
Also, linux is moving into some of the spots where otherwise solaris or HP/UX might be used. But do HP and Sun *really* care if they don't sell copies of Solaris and HP/UX? Sure, that's revenue that they're losing but at the same time, they make their money selling HARDWARE not software. So it's really not that much of a tragedy if some of their software gets pushed a bit to the side.
But with CDE, you're going up against pure software companies that have all of their revenue to lose if they let themselves be pushed to the side, and because of that, I'm betting that they'll "fight harder"
IANAL = I am not a lawyer AFAIK = As far as I know BOF = Bastard Operator From (...)
Dammit BSD people, what the hell DOES "BOF" stand for???
What bugs me is that the acronyms have been getting longer. Earlier in my formative BBS years, the longest you had to contend with was "ROFL" = Roll on the Floor Laughing or even the absurdly long (for an acronym) ROFLMAO (MAO=My Ass off) Now AFAIK and IANAL are actually common...I tell you, it's obscene.
In my day, we respected our elders, ate our vegetables, didn't say dirty words like "Microsoft" and "EULA" in polite company, and we CERTAINLY didn't use long acronyms. (Of course, BOF is not a long acronym, but I've spun far enough off-topic that I can't stop now)
Jeez, when do I see somebody prefix their slashdot post with:
OYMBAINIUMEAPMSOS = Obviously you must be an idiot not immediately understanding my el33t acronymz. Ph33r m3 spl01t2, Or something
I'm going to be at linuxexpo, it's in fact going to be my first linux trade show despite the fact that I've been using linux for close to 4 years now.
The BSD's are not the enemy of linux. They're just a "cousin" so to speak. I don't approve of their licenses, but hey, that's not really the issue. The issue in my mind is that they're bringing good free software to the table for everybody to use. Now, some people may think of BSD as the ugly third cousin that we try to keep locked in the closet:) but I don't see it that way.
It is quite interesting to see linux/BSD bigots lock horns over the advantages and disadvantages of the two - as in the maturity of BSD over the momentum of linux, the centralized development of BSD versus the bazaar development of linux, et al.
Greed tends to shoot itself in the foot, because it doesn't tend to take the longview. Companies and universities who wish to dominate certain markets (like the evil efollet.com which has practically bought my campus, www.vcu.edu) are always looking for a quick buck and never look at ways to increase the value that they give to the customer.
Other examples of greed working against itself - microsoft rushing things out the door using the "Hey!!! It compiles!! Ship it!!!" philosophy, companies exploiting the environment ruthlessly to squeeze as many dollars out of people as they can, and employers paying their employees (ie the people who have to buy their products) pathetic wages.
Slashdot Mirror
What I meant by that, when I said that I thought the FSF was justified in calling it GNU/Linux was this - for a long, long time, they've talked about developing HURD as the kernel for the GNU system.
When you look at the things that they've done, (the FSF) and see that they are still working on a kernel, it gives you the "big picture" of GNU work. The point of GNU was not to write a C compiler or a kick-ass editor or a bunch of binary utilities, even though they eventually did. The point was to build an entire system. With that in mind, when linux came along, and was GPL'd, they had a kernel, and a missing piece was suddenly there. Every other piece of software that they had written was meant to fit into the framework of the GNU system, and even though they didn't explicitly write linux in-house or through organized effort on the part of the FSF, it was a GPL'd piece of software that became part of the "system". And thus GNU/Linux. Because it's just not linux. Linux is a kernel, for chrissake! Without the rest of the GNU System (of which linux is a part) the kernel is unusable.
Frankly, not to be extreme (even though I am) but I think they'd be within their rights to call the whole damn thing the GNU System with no reference to "Linux". Why should the kernel get special treatment in naming? We don't call it GNU/ls even though the "ls" program is GPL'd. So why give Linux special consideration? It was for compromise I think.
Just my $0.02.
I can't speak to the author of this article's particular intentions when they talked about how it would be better because it was OO (if it even IS), but...
It used to be that structured programming in the imperative paradigm was going to save us all and allow us to write the killer apps and progress in computer science. Then it was the functional/logic languages (like LISP from the functional camp and PROLOG from the logic camp) and these days, Object oriented programming is the flavor of the month. Look at the popularity of C++ on the MS platform, and the long hard push for java acceptance. Jeez, and your favorite languages like python and perl, well, if they didn't start off as having OO capabilities, they were certainly hastily added.
It's the flavor of the month, man. In 10-15 years, I'd expect the object oriented paradigm to be as popular as other passed computer science fads. Not that it won't be useful, it's just that eventually people will stop thinking of it as the silver bullet to slay any programming problem
New hardware support for linux and availability under linux is only positive in my mind. It shows that the OS is moving forward, and more than that, that it isn't just an OS for punk hackers like me. :)
:)
Ever since I've heard that Mandrake and all those folks at VA have a wireless LAN I can't think about this type of thing without drooling all over myself. I've had extremely limited experience with cellular modems, all of which totally sucked. But I've heard that cards like this are quite good.
Of course the whole wireless thing does give more of a blatant angle on the privacy issue...I hope no one is under the illusion that they're going to have privacy when using these things. Unless of course they gpg their data.
This is very, very cool. The HURD is awesome, and I for one am going to be following it very closely as it develops.
For all of the people who are now going to bash the HURD as completely useless and still in development, keep in mind that linux was once at the point that the HURD currently is. It's in development, there are probably more things to be implemented than things that have already been implemented (although any developers feel free to jump in and comment at length about the status relative to the long term goals of the project) but the project is VERY cool.
It doesn't *compete* with linux in the way that you might think - it's sort of a UNIX, but it's based off of the Mach microkernel, which is a very different way of going about operating system design than your typical UNIX.
Let's face it, of course linux rocks, but in terms of operating system design concepts, linux really didn't change much, it just took ideas that were already out there and created an excellent implementation of said ideas. The HURD on the other hand is based on a different worldview of operating systems and has a lot of promise.
Besides, how bad can it be to have another choice for an operating system? You don't have to use Linux, BSD, Win95, or HURD, but it's good to know that the choice is out there. Personally, I don't know if I'm ready to join the HURD, but I'm watching the code, and I plan to jump in and contribute where I can.
And to all you people who say that the term GNU/Linux is a total travesty of fairness on the part of the FSF, the HURD is pretty much the last component of the GNU system that is needed. Whether they choose to call that GNU/HURD or just HURD is up to them, but if you look at the HURD in terms of the framework of GNU's work, it explains a lot about why Stallman wants to call Linux GNU/Linux. (And I agree with him)
What are the worst parts about programming with Motif? Honestly I've NEVER heard anything positive about it, I've never heard of somebody saying "Oh those Motif architects - they really knew what they were doing..."
Why does it suck so horrendously? All I know is GTK+, which I think is quite spiffy.
"Of all the several hundred or so apps out there that use the GTK library, they require either 1.0.x, 1.2.x, or 1.2.x-x blah blah blah."
Ever seen a lot of the KDE/Qt apps? They say, "Don't use such and such a version of Qt because it's not ready yet or the APIs are different" and so on. It's the same thing for Qt, it's just that there are probably a lot of GTK+ apps out there that haven't been updated yet. That's not the toolkits fault.
"Basically you need to install several different versions of GTK just to use the apps you want."
Bzzzt! Wrong! Just about any application worth using has been updated for the 1.2.x series, which has been out for quite a while. If it doesn't run with 1.2.x, then chances are you don't want to run it anyway.
"GTK is also one of the most bloated toolkits availible, and it is ugly"
I can't argue with your sense of aesthetics, since that's your choice, but you're wrong about it being bloated. I get the feeling that you're basing that entirely off of your theming argument - and I can tell you, you don't need anywhere near those requirements you listed, and you can stay away from 90% of the overhead if you just don't use pixmapped themes. The flexibility that pixmapped themes gives you is something you have to pay for. If you read some of the info on gtk.themes.org, you'd know this.
Not for a long time anyway.
As fast as the tech market moves, I think one thing that linux has shown me, (through the long series of such-and-such company adopting linux, and so on) is that companies are sure good at dragging ass when they want to.
And they've got a lot of motivation to. Proclaiming the end of CDE and Motif and so on is not something that Triteal wants to hear.
One of the things that I've noticed about linux and GNU software seemingly "pushing things out of the way" is that generally, it happens in a spot where a company isn't *too* afraid of giving ground.
HP/UX, Solaris, and all those other UNIXen are still extremely entrenched in corporations. Just because linux does exist in companies, and just because people do use it, doesn't mean that people can go around proclaiminig "ding dong the witch is dead" spouting out that such and such extremely popular software package for UNIX is on the way out because of some free software replacement. Even for packages that are non-free, it takes a long time to get mindshare and get people using the software, and it can take just as long to get them out of it. That QT and GTK+ are making inroads is interesting, but that's quite different from seriously threatening the EXISTANCE of an alternative.
Also, linux is moving into some of the spots where otherwise solaris or HP/UX might be used. But do HP and Sun *really* care if they don't sell copies of Solaris and HP/UX? Sure, that's revenue that they're losing but at the same time, they make their money selling HARDWARE not software. So it's really not that much of a tragedy if some of their software gets pushed a bit to the side.
But with CDE, you're going up against pure software companies that have all of their revenue to lose if they let themselves be pushed to the side, and because of that, I'm betting that they'll "fight harder"
I'm skeptical...
IANAL = I am not a lawyer
AFAIK = As far as I know
BOF = Bastard Operator From (...)
Dammit BSD people, what the hell DOES "BOF" stand for???
What bugs me is that the acronyms have been getting longer. Earlier in my formative BBS years, the longest you had to contend with was "ROFL" = Roll on the Floor Laughing or even the absurdly long (for an acronym) ROFLMAO (MAO=My Ass off) Now AFAIK and IANAL are actually common...I tell you, it's obscene.
In my day, we respected our elders, ate our vegetables, didn't say dirty words like "Microsoft" and "EULA" in polite company, and we CERTAINLY didn't use long acronyms. (Of course, BOF is not a long acronym, but I've spun far enough off-topic that I can't stop now)
Jeez, when do I see somebody prefix their slashdot post with:
OYMBAINIUMEAPMSOS = Obviously you must be an idiot not immediately understanding my el33t acronymz. Ph33r m3 spl01t2, Or something
I'm going to be at linuxexpo, it's in fact going to be my first linux trade show despite the fact that I've been using linux for close to 4 years now.
:) but I don't see it that way.
The BSD's are not the enemy of linux. They're just a "cousin" so to speak. I don't approve of their licenses, but hey, that's not really the issue. The issue in my mind is that they're bringing good free software to the table for everybody to use. Now, some people may think of BSD as the ugly third cousin that we try to keep locked in the closet
It is quite interesting to see linux/BSD bigots lock horns over the advantages and disadvantages of the two - as in the maturity of BSD over the momentum of linux, the centralized development of BSD versus the bazaar development of linux, et al.
Greed tends to shoot itself in the foot, because it doesn't tend to take the longview. Companies and universities who wish to dominate certain markets (like the evil efollet.com which has practically bought my campus, www.vcu.edu) are always looking for a quick buck and never look at ways to increase the value that they give to the customer.
Other examples of greed working against itself - microsoft rushing things out the door using the "Hey!!! It compiles!! Ship it!!!" philosophy, companies exploiting the environment ruthlessly to squeeze as many dollars out of people as they can, and employers paying their employees (ie the people who have to buy their products) pathetic wages.
Hey, it's tradition.