I bet I can see why the talks broke down. Licensing Java 1.1.1 to Microsoft for integration into Windows/IE worked out real well for Sun.
Oh, to be a fly in that Adobe/Microsoft boardroom....
Adobe:
So, we're glad you want to license the PDF spec from us.
Microsoft:
Yeah, how 'bout that. Say, we thought it would value-enhance PDF to add the Win32DisplayDraw method to our implementation.
Adobe:
Umm, adding in Windows-specific bits would make the Portable Document Format kinda non-Portable, doncha think?
Microsoft:
Sure, but right now, the vast majority of your users use Windows, do they not?
Adobe:
Uh, yeeeah....
Microsoft
And you want them to have the richest eXPerience they can with your PDF format and tools, yes?
Adobe:
Yeeeaah...
Microsoft:
So why shouldn't we give them Win32PaintControl to take advantage of the capabilities of 99% of your userbase?
Adobe:
Because it's the Portable Document Format! Hey, wasn't "Win32PaintControl" "Win32DisplayDraw" just a second ago?
Microsoft:
[waves hand dismissively] Details, details. We thought that the whole Portable thing was funny, since the portability only matters to 0.001% of your customers.
We also thought you might want to take advantage of the new encryption capabilities for protecting your customers' valuable data with the upcoming Vista Next Generation Secure Computing Base.
Adobe:
PORTABLE! How is "Vista-only" more portable than "Windows-only"?!
Microsoft:
We understand. You see, we have a passion for your business. We can see that these minor modifications to the PDF standard require quite a bit of time and effort to help upgrade your customers' eXPerience and open to them new Vistas in computing through our partnership. [gets out checkbook]. How much time and effort do you think you'll need?
Adobe:
[eyes checkbook hungrily] Fi... Hey. Aren't you working on a PDF competitor for this new "Vista in computing"?
Microsoft:
Now you're just being difficult. For a talking point in our Office 2007 feature laundry list, you're sure annoying us. I think we'd better settle this in the market. We've tried to be reasonable.
Adobe:
Fine with me. I'm outta here! Enough of this "Windows users are the only users" crapola. [gets up and heads out]
Microsoft:
What was that?! You say you'll sue us for anti-trust, because you won't license PDF to us! Greedy backstabbers!
Adobe:
[from a ways off, without looking back] portable!
Microsoft:
[rolls eyes, sighs] Always with the zealots....
What I'd really love to see is an open alternative to Aperture or LightRoom, or even just Picasa. I want to see my EXIF data without loading another application!
And the kicker, they've so far lost a truckload of money.
If "they" is the XBox division, yes. However, Microsoft itself continues to make money hand over fist via the Two Towers: Windows and Office, to the tune of several billion profit per quarter (3-4 bn USD last I saw). Thus, they can afford to lose many truckloads of money on the XBox, so long as their Two Towers stand.
This subsidized loss in the XBox division is very much worth it, since the XBox is one (fairly important) arm of their overall strategy for increasing revenue via media services. XBox is not merely a gaming console, but is being positioned as a gateway to media services on Windows/Microsoft software. With Microsoft DRM acceptance, they are unusually well-positioned for providing end-to-end near-future media services (e.g. the increasing acceptance of Microsoft's IPTV platform + Windows MCE + Windows + XBox + PocketPC/Smartphone).
I had tried xfs and jfs back a few years ago (when I first got this notebook), but they both ate my filesystems for lunch. So for notebook systems, I now am pretty dedicated to ext3.
That said, both jfs and xfs are pretty comparable, save for xfs's storing data in the directory inodes, which can be a good space-saver.
a word of warning about xfs: make sure you can always shutdown cleanly, or data loss and/or filesystem corruption can easily result. With that caveat in mind, however, XFS totally rocks.
I should also mention that I had great success with vmware workstation 5.5 running through at least one, if not several suspend-resume cycles. It was without the ATI driver (fglrx) in the kernel, and as is well-known, all bets are off when ati starts mucking about in your kernel. It just kept going like nothing had happened.
That's a bitch to get acceleration working in some, if not all, Linux distributions.
No, getting 3d acceleration is quite easy.
The problem is that the card and/or drivers are very finnicky, so it's hard to get 3d and suspend to work at the same time. Unfortunately, the workarounds provided in the Windows drivers don't work for Linux, and the vendors of Designed For Windows hardware refuse to give us Linux people any love.
I run Linux, and have VMware around for the (thankfully very very few) times I need to run Windows. With attached storage, I'm thinking about also doing a SuSE image, to help walk my parents through how to do things on their computers.
So, as a Linux user, I run Linux as the host, and Windows XP & 98 as the guests.
That's my situation anyway. Things work fine on my laptop under Linux, and I hope my next laptop will be even better (since I'll be ditching ATI on the laptop for Intel (and a linux pre-install, which should give the "works with linux" guarantee even if I don't keep the original install around (plus, I get to give a distro money!)), which will likely make things even easier.)
Sources at Fluendo say yes, but that it requires non-free plugins. I don't have more information than that, unfortunately. If you're interested, I'd recommend talking directly to Fluendo.
The Ubuntu releases aren't particular stable; if you look at the process, you'll see that there's nothing like the level of testing that goes on in Debian.
Nor does Ubuntu have Debian's high latency. It's a tradeoff, really.
That said, I agree that stability on the server is much more important than being on the cutting edge of technology, for most server uses. Besides, if you install Ubuntu to get a Debian system, well, why not just install Debian?:)
I guess it depends on the usage where the maximum cost/benefit point lies. If you want a rock-solid mail/webserver, Debian Stable is great. If you want to stream 3gp to your phone, Ubuntu is probably the best bet (with Flumotion and packages). Or if you want to use the latest version of PHP or whatever.
Are you serious? There are any number of them, including Sun's, Metrowerks', Borland's (at least a while ago), and so on. In fact, Sun's is free of charge, and is drag-n-drop.
Try telling my father "Yeah, to get that network card working, you have drop to a command prompt, go to your kernel source directory, make menuconfig, find the card in the list, go compile, install the kernel, update your bootloader, and then you should be ok"... Whereas in windows, it's "Stick the disc in, answer any questions, reboot when it tells you to".
1996 called. The Blue Screen of Death is lonely and wants its friend Have To Recomple the Kernel back.
Using native widgets for cross-platform code has been tried. It was called AWT (Abstract Widget Toolkit) and was eventually replaced by Swing, but not before giving Java a reputation for "Compile Once, Debug Everywhere".
This should be clarified, as it's an important point.
The equality was provided by Windows being so ubiquitous, certainly, but this would also be true with sufficient competition amongst several equal OS vendors (as opposed to one monopoly and two roughly equal bit players). If there weren't Microsoft to dictate APIs, vendors would use a set of standard, cross-platform APIs (e.g. QT, wxWidgets, OpenGL, SDL,) and open standards for drivers would likely also have come into existance and be well-established.
I would arge that the open standards were much more important. If each vendor had their own, proprietary slots instead of USB, firewire, ATA, PCI, etc. history would likely have turned out much, much, much differently. It was the open standards that let you buy an IBM today and a Gateway tomorrow and not have to throw away all of your hardware.
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Oh, to be a fly in that Adobe/Microsoft boardroom....
Adobe: So, we're glad you want to license the PDF spec from us. Microsoft: Yeah, how 'bout that. Say, we thought it would value-enhance PDF to add the Win32DisplayDraw method to our implementation. Adobe: Umm, adding in Windows-specific bits would make the Portable Document Format kinda non-Portable, doncha think? Microsoft: Sure, but right now, the vast majority of your users use Windows, do they not? Adobe: Uh, yeeeah.... Microsoft And you want them to have the richest eXPerience they can with your PDF format and tools, yes? Adobe: Yeeeaah... Microsoft: So why shouldn't we give them Win32PaintControl to take advantage of the capabilities of 99% of your userbase? Adobe: Because it's the Portable Document Format! Hey, wasn't "Win32PaintControl" "Win32DisplayDraw" just a second ago? Microsoft: [waves hand dismissively] Details, details. We thought that the whole Portable thing was funny, since the portability only matters to 0.001% of your customers.We also thought you might want to take advantage of the new encryption capabilities for protecting your customers' valuable data with the upcoming Vista Next Generation Secure Computing Base.
Adobe: PORTABLE! How is "Vista-only" more portable than "Windows-only"?! Microsoft: We understand. You see, we have a passion for your business. We can see that these minor modifications to the PDF standard require quite a bit of time and effort to help upgrade your customers' eXPerience and open to them new Vistas in computing through our partnership. [gets out checkbook]. How much time and effort do you think you'll need? Adobe: [eyes checkbook hungrily] Fi... Hey. Aren't you working on a PDF competitor for this new "Vista in computing"? Microsoft: Now you're just being difficult. For a talking point in our Office 2007 feature laundry list, you're sure annoying us. I think we'd better settle this in the market. We've tried to be reasonable. Adobe: Fine with me. I'm outta here! Enough of this "Windows users are the only users" crapola. [gets up and heads out] Microsoft: What was that?! You say you'll sue us for anti-trust, because you won't license PDF to us! Greedy backstabbers! Adobe: [from a ways off, without looking back] portable! Microsoft: [rolls eyes, sighs] Always with the zealots....This subsidized loss in the XBox division is very much worth it, since the XBox is one (fairly important) arm of their overall strategy for increasing revenue via media services. XBox is not merely a gaming console, but is being positioned as a gateway to media services on Windows/Microsoft software. With Microsoft DRM acceptance, they are unusually well-positioned for providing end-to-end near-future media services (e.g. the increasing acceptance of Microsoft's IPTV platform + Windows MCE + Windows + XBox + PocketPC/Smartphone).
Unless it's a vulnerability in the spec. But yes, fully-open specs are exactly what the doctor ordered, as it would solve most of the problem.
Looking at my mailserver [maildir], I'm pretty sure this is saving me quite a bit of space.
That said, both jfs and xfs are pretty comparable, save for xfs's storing data in the directory inodes, which can be a good space-saver.
a word of warning about xfs: make sure you can always shutdown cleanly, or data loss and/or filesystem corruption can easily result. With that caveat in mind, however, XFS totally rocks.
I should also mention that I had great success with vmware workstation 5.5 running through at least one, if not several suspend-resume cycles. It was without the ATI driver (fglrx) in the kernel, and as is well-known, all bets are off when ati starts mucking about in your kernel. It just kept going like nothing had happened.
The problem is that the card and/or drivers are very finnicky, so it's hard to get 3d and suspend to work at the same time. Unfortunately, the workarounds provided in the Windows drivers don't work for Linux, and the vendors of Designed For Windows hardware refuse to give us Linux people any love.
So, as a Linux user, I run Linux as the host, and Windows XP & 98 as the guests.
That's my situation anyway. Things work fine on my laptop under Linux, and I hope my next laptop will be even better (since I'll be ditching ATI on the laptop for Intel (and a linux pre-install, which should give the "works with linux" guarantee even if I don't keep the original install around (plus, I get to give a distro money!)), which will likely make things even easier.)
If you want hardware/software support, why stop at MacBook and just run any of the bajillions of Windows notebooks?
likely ACPI and/or 3d driver troubles? Have you tried just using the 2D driver with a fixed DSDT?
Intel has Free drivers in the vanilla kernel. I've heard the drivers work great. Not the best 3D, but suspend works great!
Sources at Fluendo say yes, but that it requires non-free plugins. I don't have more information than that, unfortunately. If you're interested, I'd recommend talking directly to Fluendo.
That said, I agree that stability on the server is much more important than being on the cutting edge of technology, for most server uses. Besides, if you install Ubuntu to get a Debian system, well, why not just install Debian? :)
I guess it depends on the usage where the maximum cost/benefit point lies. If you want a rock-solid mail/webserver, Debian Stable is great. If you want to stream 3gp to your phone, Ubuntu is probably the best bet (with Flumotion and packages). Or if you want to use the latest version of PHP or whatever.
Are you serious? There are any number of them, including Sun's, Metrowerks', Borland's (at least a while ago), and so on. In fact, Sun's is free of charge, and is drag-n-drop.
Yes, that would be the point. Thanks.
It's also, sadly, rather hidden, particularly for home users.
The equality was provided by Windows being so ubiquitous, certainly, but this would also be true with sufficient competition amongst several equal OS vendors (as opposed to one monopoly and two roughly equal bit players). If there weren't Microsoft to dictate APIs, vendors would use a set of standard, cross-platform APIs (e.g. QT, wxWidgets, OpenGL, SDL,) and open standards for drivers would likely also have come into existance and be well-established.
I would arge that the open standards were much more important . If each vendor had their own, proprietary slots instead of USB, firewire, ATA, PCI, etc. history would likely have turned out much, much, much differently. It was the open standards that let you buy an IBM today and a Gateway tomorrow and not have to throw away all of your hardware.