There might be some insight provided by an analogy. We assume that any city (OS) is innately just as crackable (crime-ridden) as any other, and that people generally pack together in a city (this allows us to remove non-uniform population densities such as suburbs and things).
While there are definitely advantages in living in a huge city (public transportation, events that you can't get in a smaller town, etc.), there is (at least) one huge disadvantage, i.e. crime. Crime is (generally) proportional to the population density of an area. That is, for the sake of our analogy, the more dense a population, the more services and features offered for that population, but the more crime occurs.
So you have WindowsTown, a huge megacity that dwarfs even the next largest town by orders of magnitude (MacCity), and which offers many amenities that are not found in other cities, but there is an enormous crime problem in that city. So much so, in fact, that just about everybody has armed guards with them at all times, and every apartment has the equivalent of a bank's security system. In fact, the problem is so bad that WindowsTown's city government, run by the illustrious billionaire William H. Gates III, is instituting a crackdown on crime and terrorism by controlling what everyone can do in WindowsTown (the project is codenamed Palladium). This will likely help enormously with the crime and terrorism problem, but civil rights groups are concerned that the system will be abused to the advantage of the current government and its allies (generally very large businesses), at the expense of the average consumer and smaller parties and businesses. The citizenry of WindowsTown might be somewhat concerned about this new program, but generally haven't heard much about it at all (aside from Gates' promise to end crime and terrorism, which, of course,resonates with them). They may know that there are other cities out there, but are concerned (and somewhat rightly so) that their prefab house in WindowsTown will be hard to move to another city, and that their car (which, like their house, was designed from the ground up to run in WindowsTown and which will likely not work in another city!) will no longer work. So, if they even know about other cities, they are generally afraid of leaving the "comfort" of WindowsTown, so they stay, the population stays up (despite the crime which, given a citizenry not bound to any specific city, would cause many to leave such a crime-ridden city!), and the crime rate stays up.
Additionally, we have MacCity, which has a good-sized populace. It's the second largest city on Desek Topia Planet, but has a very, very small slice of the total population of the planet. It is almost completely crime-free, and has a pretty good public transportation system, and you can even (somewhat often) get to see a good number of the more popular concerts and shows from WindowsTown. One of the most popular models of car ever--made by Mayor Gates' company--has a model that is pretty close to the WindowsTown version (but requires a separate purchase, of course). Many from WindowsTown argue (and possibly rightly so) that MacCity is so crime-free because it's so small, and use this to justify why they won't move from WindowsTown to MacCity. Those in MacCity, however, generally disagree and argue that the architecture of MacCity itself prevents crime. This is a great source of debate, but it remains mostly academic, as the vast majority of WindowsTown residents
As a side note (which, notably, very, very few from WindowsTown knows about), there is the Federation of Leenucks. It is a federation of a number of cities which call themselves "distributions." Reports on the FoL back in WindowsTown and MacCity varies widely between it being a gleaming utopia (complete with flying cars!) to a complete breakdown of law and order, wild-west style. There's certainly almost no crime in the FoL. However, th
I had a point-by-point refute going, but I'll drop it because it's not healthy to stay this frustrated.:)
I understand your perspective. I've had things not work on my laptop before, and so I'm not terribly happy with the situation. I've no illusion of Linux being the Holy Grail of operating systems--I know that there is a good deal of hardware that works under Windows that doesn't work under Linux, and some of it doesn't even work easily. [BTW, what kind of weird-ass DVD+RW do you have?! DVD drives are very standard these days, and I've not heard of any such weirdness!] Linux is by no means perfect, and I (along with others) am trying to make it work better--suggestions for improvements are always welcome!
That said, I most certainly contest your assertion that "Linux Sucks" at this. It does a grave disservice to all those who worked hard to make sure that hardware--despite the vendors lack of support, other vendors' outright HOSTILITY, and users' GREAT APATHY--managed to make most any piece of hardware work on Linux, and this is why it pisses me off that people say that "Linux sucks at supporting hardware." The devs have already moved heaven and earth to get the support that's in place, but that's not enough--people want it to be exactly like the situation is with Windows. But it isn't gonna be at the same level as Windows until it's at the same popularity as Windows, which requires it (apparently magically) to be much, much BETTER than Windows (or else, why switch from something that works well enough)!. A losing proposition if I ever saw one, which is why I just want to take this moment (in this probably obscure thread) to thank all the people that helped make my laptop work with Linux! You all seriously ROCK!:)
Now, I understand if you choose to use Windows because the hardware (and software) support is better. But understand that
Linux's support cannot improve unless people put their money where their mouth is and stop just using Windows
It's not an inherent fault of Linux that you cannot use Random Piece of Hardware--it's sheer lack of marketshare that the vendors don't support Linux.
Another way of stating the above: developers are already working hard to get as much hardware as possible working under Linux. They cannot magically make vendors support Linux and, until vendors do, most everything will have to be put in place by Linux developers doing lots of hard work that is otherwise done by hardware vendors
By using Windows instead of Linux, you forfeit the right (but not the ability;) to whine about Linux's hardware support, because you're now part of the problem. Vendors won't support Linux until they perceive a need, and you're not showing them the need!
Finally--I somewhat agree about X. It'd be nice if a vendor could supply a.inf file to specify supported modes and an xorg.conf could be modular (that is, it could load various vendors'.inf files instead of having one big file). That said, setting up X on a modern Linux distribution is easy--point, click, and you're done (SuSE is what I've used recently; Red Hat had one too). If you're doing it The Hard Way, it's your own fault that it's not easy--"just because you can edit doesn't mean you should".:)
Oh, and the video suspend-to-disk/RAM thing. It's not anywhere as simple as you set it up to be. It's actually a pretty involved process, from what I've seen. There may be tools to help out, if you're interested. What notebook do you have, if you're still interested in making it work?
In conclusion, I wish I knew of an Apple for Linux--that is, a hardware vendor with the cojones to actually support Linux fully on their hardware; none of this "winmodem doesn't work; no suspend to disk" crapola. To such a vendor, if one actually exists: I would give you (potentially quite a bit of) money!
I really hope the Linux community will start taking the "It Just Fucking Works" philosophy to heart, since that's what normal human beings expect from their computers.
Believe me, it is the foremost in most distro developers' minds, in my experience. In fact, many things are now easier than a similar scenario under Windows or Mac. Problem: we cannot work miracles, and we cannot magically make devices work without vendor help (or lots of time and effort).
people with ATI-equipped Linux laptops get to choose betweeen proper power management and accelerated 3D graphics, whereas things just fucking work under XP.
Solutions:
Use an ATI (or other) card with a Free driver (not an option on all ATI cards)
Use an NVidia driver (currently quite the powerhouse)
ATI is actively working to make their driver work with Software Suspend--it's an issue with their driver not Linux itself.
It is worth noting that Windows has no accelated graphics support Out Of The Box--the vidcard vendor does all the heavy lifting. That is the reason Windows "just fucking work[s]"--do or die, natural selection, purely due to Microsoft's overwhelming marketshare.
Now, I'll give you that things are easier, but the way you phrased it really pisses me off. What can Linux do to make things Just Fucking Work like that?
Emulate all of Windows
Emulate enough of Windows to make the software work and painstakingly reverse-engineer all of the drivers for Windows (extremely hard for some classes of hardware)
Move Heaven and Earth (just gotta find a long enough lever for the penguin to stand on....)
And even after that, it'll be on par with Windows (in the Just Fucking Works department), and people will still use Windows instead (and whine because Linux is different)!
Sure, Windows is the best gaming OS, but purely because of its marketshare--all games and hardware work on it (or else the vendor would die or be relegated to a niche market). There's nothing inherent in Windows that makes it superior--it's superior because it's superior.
[Interestingly, in another metric, we're far above Windows in the Just Fucking Works department. That metric is "hardware that works out of the box (aka Automagically) compared to all hardware that works on the platform, because we can't rely on vendors to do the hard work for us.]
On my home net, my ancient laptop serves files, including oggs. There's no point in streaming the audio--I just mount the filesystem from my PCs and mythtv box and play them as though they were local--the point of a networked filesystem. I can't imagine why you'd not be able to do the same thing in your setup.
If you want symmetric processing, go ahead and get the XBox 360 (3xPPC), and wait for the mod chip.
Or you could buy the Official Sony Linux kit. At least, I hope they make one again. The Cell has interesting properties for some things I am interested in, and such a kit would quite possibly be a good enough reason for me to shell out (I'm hardly a hardcore gamer).
Then again, in the much less probable, I keep hoping that IBM will release Linux Cell workstations and laptops.
The real test should be with what's available to Joe Sixpack.
What would you be measuring with such a test? The only metric that I can think of such a test measuring would be popularity of Operating Systems amongst common vendors (and maybe the informedness of the common user, if you allow for that in your definition of "available to"), but the answer is currently quite obvious--Windows is the most ubiquitous. What an unintersting test!
ActiveX is good, the technology makes using a web browser as an application environment feasible. Just because some of teh activeX plugins had security holes, and people always clicked on yes to install activex stuff does not make it bad.
Incorrect. Well, not incorrect per se, but definitely incomplete. A web browser can be an application environment via (at least) the following technologies:
ActiveX: This {is,is not} signed, do you want to trust it? It runs (iirc) as any other program on your PC. Downsides: terrible permissions granularity, Windows-only.
Java Applets: This {is,is not} signed by foo and asks for permission to do bar, do you want to give it these permissions (e.g. disk access)? Runs in a sandbox, so access (unless signed and allowed and barring bugs) outside the sandbox is verboten. Downsides: For full functionality, requires Sun or Sun-compatible Java runtime, so is usually an extra download for users. For abridged functionality, you may wish to restrict your functionality to the ancient Java runtime 1.1.1, which is (at least mostly) implemented in Microsoft's Windows-Extended Java (also known as "Microsoft VM"), but will still likely be an additional (free) download for most users. I suspect Macs come bundled with Java, but I'm not certain.
XUL: A mozilla-only technology, does applications via XPCOM, XML, and JavaScript. Downsides: Restricted functionality (unless you can install stuff for XPCOM, I think, I'm somewhat fuzzy on this) compared to other solutions; Mozilla-only, a (free) download for most users.
XAML: Microsoft's take on XUL. Windows Vista only (if it's still included, which iirc it is), I believe it requires Microsoft's.net, but I could be wrong.
AJAX: entirely javascript in-browser. Downsides: requires good JavaScript compatibility.
Plain old CGI: available in any browser. Downsides: very, very limited ease of use compared to other solutions, places very rigid restraints on the user-server interaction.
Shockwave Flash: I have little experience with this outside of watching short animations and interactive websites with it. Downside: requires Shockwave Flash plugin (a problem on any non-x86 platform, last I knew, including x86_64!)
There are likely others, but these are probably the most common. Notably, several of these are quite cross-platform and provide little, if any, vendor lockin, and the security options of some are much better than the security options of others.
Thanks for the feedback. I suspect that you're vastly undercounting recurring Windows costs (e.g. retraining), but neither of us has hard figures on the matter. I agree that a sudden change to Linux cold turkey would be expensive. Slowly spinning up Linux to keep your options open in the future would be a much more advisable tack to take.
It sounds like you are making an (at least mostly) informed decision. I still hold it to be the wrong one short-term, but I understand it. I suspect you're wrong about the superiority of Windows over other solutions (including updates and things), and that there are advantages to using non-Windows OSes today, but that's neither here nor there.
I'd recommend at least keeping up with the Linux (and/or Mac) world at home. Buy a Linux or Mac box and keep up to speed on it, in case you can leverage the knowledge in the future. Purchase hardware and software that you know will work with Linux as well as with Windows--it helps in case you ever need/want to make the switch, and will give you leverage in negotiations. Additionally, ask your suppliers for support for non-Windows OSes, so that your business solution isn't being dictated to you instead of you deciding what you will be doing. They can't build it if you don't ask. Finally, Linux has some capabilities that Windows will never have--leverage these strengths when applicable, though it may not be until you get bigger that many of these strengths will be realized. Basically, keep your options open; you never know when you could be next to be sued into License 7.x!
I hope that the situation will change someday, that we will have a level playing field, but if too many people are like you, my hope dies. Maybe there's hope--Robber Barons of the past were overcome, maybe this one will too. It'll be a much harder row to hoe, though, due to the unique capabilities of knifing your competitors when you own the software & hardware.
I guess I have a question: What would it take Microsoft (or Linux) doing to make you consider switching? If the temperature is slowly ratcheted up, when do you jump out (or do you just boil)?
The *second* that I start looking into why X isn't working in Linux, I'm losing money and valuable time, because my alternative is to spend a couple of hundred bucks on Windows and be done with it.
Not necessarily, but I cede the point. Note, however, that there are other things that can tip the balances.
It's kind of like if somebody came out with a "better" refrigerator (let's say that it'll save you a bit in energy costs), but you have to put it together yourself, and learn all about refrigeration to use it.
Again, you don't have to assemble it yourself. You can, if you want to. Additionally, you can fix it yourself, which is the more apt analogy imho.
The more apt analogy is this: Your refigerator's compressor is broken. However, Kenmore kludged around it so that it worked with a special adaptor that they helpfully included, which notably only works with Power Company A. This isn't usually a big deal because Power Company A owns 90% of the electric market in your area.
However, there are much lower prices at Power Company B, and they're looking more and more appealing as Power Company A has been pushing its might to get Kenmore and other appliance vendors to do what it wants (such as bundle free 2-day deals with Power Company A for their new Broadband service, and they also provide special hookups that work better with Power Company A's emerging water services, a market which it's been eyeing for a while. Kenmore and others have even recently come out with water filtration and tap systems that require Power Company A's water service!). Not to mention the problems that pretty much only affect A's customers, since all the wiretapping and power-stealing tools target A's systems (and since it doesn't cost A any real money ("what, are you going to leave all your appliances behind?!"), they don't particularly care to make it much harder to steal or eavesdrop on you (though since Power Companies B and C are getting much more attention, this is changing))
But the problem is that, if you want to use your existing appliances with Power Company B, you need to figure out why almost all of your appliances seem to have minor, but annoying (and sometimes major and terribly annoying!) problems when you tried out Power Company B. Power Company B, trying to grab a little market share so that they can survive under A's foot, has provided, free of charge of course, an attachment for your appliances to help them use Power Company B's power. However, since they have to painstakingly reverse-engineer an exceptionally complicated device for each appliance (namely Kenmore's for your fridge, Panasonic's for your TV, and so on), this attachment works fairly well, but the results are not at all guaranteed. However, if you have friends who know how, or you know how yourself, you can make your appliances work with Power Company B. Unfortunately, since Power Company A has 90+% of the market, finding appliances which aren't reliant upon Power Company A is a difficult proposition, and most Power Company B customers either work hard to find appliances compatible with Power Company B (usually, they have to look on the internet, since essentially no vendor says it on the box), or they look for appliances that aren't too hard to get working with Power Company B and take their chances (which can also be difficult, since it often involves losing a little functionality, and the vendors make it even harder by changing entire motors in the same series, so you have to be pretty careful!) [As an aside, Power Company C has made a good place for itself in the market by providing pretty good service at somewhat higher prices, but you have to buy most of your appliances from them, and the appliances don't work with any other power company. To their credit, though, those appliances from others who support more than just Power Company A also support Power Company C on the box,
I've tried most of them, and most of them have been nothing but problems. Sure, I got a few to boot correctly, but that's where it ended.
Could be. More information would be helpful, but I'd suspect offhand bad vendor support, likely in the form of bad information in various pieces of hardware (e.g. DSDTs with bad device information). This is often the cause of problems in my exprience--bad DSDTs and various bits of hardware lying about what's really there.
That's why people don't generally build their own cars: sure, they'd save money, but only a fool doesn't weigh cost against their own time.
Fortunately, Linux doesn't require any such thing. There are Linuxes which let you build your own metaphorical car, but there are a great number aimed at the average user which has no such requirement (indeed, aside from lack of hardware/software vendor support and familiarity (which Linux has little control over!), it's as easy or easier to use these Linuxes than Certain Other Operating Systems!)
I've not heard anything about this, but I sincerely hope this is the case. Sony was ingenious in releasing a Linux kit for the PS2, and I hope this continues (why ingenious? Well, if people want to put Linux on SomePieceOfHardware so badly that they will painstakingly reverse-engineering the hardware, but a vendor-supported Linux CD/DVD exists already....:)
Anyhow, if Sony releases an official Linux kit for the PS3 before IBM releases some sort of Cell box (please, IBM! Give to us well-working and well-supported Linux notebooks and desktops! Be the Apple of Linux!), then it's quite possible I'll buy the PS3 + Linux kit, to test drive Cell. Uh, yeah. For the numerical computing only/i.... Riiiiight.....;)
This causes the publisher to lose out on a sale for every used copy of the game sold.
Note please that not every user who bought a game used would have bought the game new at full price had they not had the used option. If you can't afford it, you can't afford it, and this presents itself as illegal copying games as well as buying used games and buying games later on down the road when they're cheaper.
Additionally, for a game to be a used copy, it must necessarily have previously been sold and then re-sold. Assuming that the original purchaser truly resold it (and didn't retain a copy), you've still sold one copy to one person. You've not lost a sale, you've gained a user (over the lifespan of the game; the original purchaser is no longer a user, though was once).
Granted this requires a lot of gamers to sell their copies in the first place, but I can kind of see where the publisher is coming from in this regard.
Oh, I certainly do too. However, just because you have unprcedented power to make your customers' lives miserable in the effort to achieve a little more profit (there are certainly those that buy used who will buy a copy new if that avenue is closed off, but this comes at the expense of many more users).
Software is extremely unlike many other things which have been sold in the past, in that the producers have unprecedented ability to modify their software to their customers' and competitors' benefit--or detriment.
There have been many games I've passed up in my Windows-using past because they were simply Too Danged Expensive. Look, if I go to a used book store because I can buy a lot more books there than new ($3 instead of $8, for instance, for a paperback) how much more am I gonna buy used games that run $40-50 new?!
Now I'm a Linux user and much more willing to shell out that kind of money if the game is good and has native Linux support, so there's one angle you could persue.;) [thank you for UT2004, NWN, Doom3, and Quake4, amongst others!]
Unfortunately, I suspect "prevention" has much more to do with screwing the customers over (Even Better CD Checks and Licensing! Whoo! Just what I wanted--new ways for things to break so that I can't play the games I purchased from you [the CD check has to be the #1 reason I cannot play a game]!) than listening to the customers.
You know that, and I know that, but the "computer community" is not so well-informed. It sees "PC" as the opposite of "Mac", as in: "is that computer a PC or a Mac?" Other kinds of computers aren't even on the radar.
Or, to adapt a certain Blues Brothers quote, "We support both operating systems: PC and Mac!"
What I would *really* love, is a thin client that can stream mpegs from my mythbox.
What you're probably looking for then is some sort of mini-itx via box, and they can be had for a few hundred dollars, and can be put in more attractive cases than most (even things not intended as cases, as we've seen now and again).
Such is my long-range plan: mini-itx box in a pretty box in the living room for playback/control of the Beefy MythBox in the server room, and various mini-itx stations throughout the house (e.g. kitchen) primarily for music playback.
The user can not execute the script. They can only execute perl.
Now we're getting into a semantics argument. I'd call running a program "executing" it, regardless of whether it's done by the kernel or another program (e.g. perl, java. mono).
If you have a problem with them being able to run perl, then you must chmod o-x/usr/bin/perl.
That's fine, so long as you don't want them to run any perl programs. Or, if you prefer, have them have perl run perl programs. But the minute you write something in perl that you do want them to run, then it's either let them run all perl programs or no perl programs, and I'd personally rather have finer-grained control than that.
The goal of security work should not be to limit what can be executed, but who can execute.
Indeed, but, as you so aptly illustrate, it's not. Your script example illustrates this aptly: make a perl script in/usr/local/sbin; chown it root:bin; chmod it go-x. Users can still execute the sucker.
If random kids can execute arbitrary commands through your firefox, they can do whatever you can.
True, but we shouldn't make it any easier. This is a case where the behaviour of something is broken, and should be fixed.
UPDATE: actually, mounting the filesystem noexec is sufficient to stop ld-linux.so's maigc, it seems.
If you have read permissions shouldn't you be able to make a copy and set the permissions any way you like on that copy anyway (ok, maybe it is a problem if the user has absolutely no write privileges on any part of the filesystem but in every other case it is merely a shortcut for copying and changing permissions)?
Well, that's a good point, but it's not sufficient to say that this isn't a problem, for the following reasons:
Copying the file is an extra step, and an extra hurdle for an attacker to overcome
The functionality of the eXecute bit is broken if you can execute the file despite the permission setting (well, arguably, it's not since its' not the kernel's fault, but it makes the eXecute bit that much less effective)
It's possible that the user doesn't have permissions to execute things where they can write to, and write to where they can execute [e.g. home dirs,/tmp,/var/tmp being mounted noexec, while / and/usr/local are mounted allowing execution but not write [or, more likely, the permissions don't let the user write to anything]]
As an example of the extra hurdle copying imposes, say you want to attack someone via a set of holes in Firefox. With/lib/ld-linux.so, you need only the following, if you can't make firefox itself do arbitrary things:
Be able to download (or trick the user into downloading) and know where your attack program (say, an irc bot that will let you do things as the user, or a local-user crack for certain kernels to get root) is [potentially one or two lower-level vulnerabilities]
Execute/lib/ld-linux.so.2 on the attack program or trick the user into executing it. This is guaranteed to work so long as the user can read the file (optionally, after you've tried to execute it directly, which is unlikely to work since files don't generally get saved +x, and the filesystem can be mounted noexec) [this requires another hole]
With out the ld-linux vector, you have to:
Be able to download and know where your attack program is (same as before)
Execute cp to copy the program to a place you know you can execute it (optionally after you've tried to execute it directly; same as before)
Execute chmod to change the permissions to execute it (not at all guaranteed, again filesystem could/should be noexec!)
The behaviour you describe ("failed to map segment from shared object: Operation not permitted") will occur if you do not have read access to the file. If you have no read but execute (0444), you can execute the program regardless of permission setting (not tested noexec, but is likely).
It is, however, to be noted that:
You cannot execute the program via this method if you cannot read the file
You cannot gain privileges unless the program is suid (so watch your suid files!)
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While there are definitely advantages in living in a huge city (public transportation, events that you can't get in a smaller town, etc.), there is (at least) one huge disadvantage, i.e. crime. Crime is (generally) proportional to the population density of an area. That is, for the sake of our analogy, the more dense a population, the more services and features offered for that population, but the more crime occurs.
So you have WindowsTown, a huge megacity that dwarfs even the next largest town by orders of magnitude (MacCity), and which offers many amenities that are not found in other cities, but there is an enormous crime problem in that city. So much so, in fact, that just about everybody has armed guards with them at all times, and every apartment has the equivalent of a bank's security system. In fact, the problem is so bad that WindowsTown's city government, run by the illustrious billionaire William H. Gates III, is instituting a crackdown on crime and terrorism by controlling what everyone can do in WindowsTown (the project is codenamed Palladium). This will likely help enormously with the crime and terrorism problem, but civil rights groups are concerned that the system will be abused to the advantage of the current government and its allies (generally very large businesses), at the expense of the average consumer and smaller parties and businesses. The citizenry of WindowsTown might be somewhat concerned about this new program, but generally haven't heard much about it at all (aside from Gates' promise to end crime and terrorism, which, of course,resonates with them). They may know that there are other cities out there, but are concerned (and somewhat rightly so) that their prefab house in WindowsTown will be hard to move to another city, and that their car (which, like their house, was designed from the ground up to run in WindowsTown and which will likely not work in another city!) will no longer work. So, if they even know about other cities, they are generally afraid of leaving the "comfort" of WindowsTown, so they stay, the population stays up (despite the crime which, given a citizenry not bound to any specific city, would cause many to leave such a crime-ridden city!), and the crime rate stays up.
Additionally, we have MacCity, which has a good-sized populace. It's the second largest city on Desek Topia Planet, but has a very, very small slice of the total population of the planet. It is almost completely crime-free, and has a pretty good public transportation system, and you can even (somewhat often) get to see a good number of the more popular concerts and shows from WindowsTown. One of the most popular models of car ever--made by Mayor Gates' company--has a model that is pretty close to the WindowsTown version (but requires a separate purchase, of course). Many from WindowsTown argue (and possibly rightly so) that MacCity is so crime-free because it's so small, and use this to justify why they won't move from WindowsTown to MacCity. Those in MacCity, however, generally disagree and argue that the architecture of MacCity itself prevents crime. This is a great source of debate, but it remains mostly academic, as the vast majority of WindowsTown residents
As a side note (which, notably, very, very few from WindowsTown knows about), there is the Federation of Leenucks. It is a federation of a number of cities which call themselves "distributions." Reports on the FoL back in WindowsTown and MacCity varies widely between it being a gleaming utopia (complete with flying cars!) to a complete breakdown of law and order, wild-west style. There's certainly almost no crime in the FoL. However, th
I understand your perspective. I've had things not work on my laptop before, and so I'm not terribly happy with the situation. I've no illusion of Linux being the Holy Grail of operating systems--I know that there is a good deal of hardware that works under Windows that doesn't work under Linux, and some of it doesn't even work easily. [BTW, what kind of weird-ass DVD+RW do you have?! DVD drives are very standard these days, and I've not heard of any such weirdness!] Linux is by no means perfect, and I (along with others) am trying to make it work better--suggestions for improvements are always welcome!
That said, I most certainly contest your assertion that "Linux Sucks" at this. It does a grave disservice to all those who worked hard to make sure that hardware--despite the vendors lack of support, other vendors' outright HOSTILITY, and users' GREAT APATHY--managed to make most any piece of hardware work on Linux , and this is why it pisses me off that people say that "Linux sucks at supporting hardware." The devs have already moved heaven and earth to get the support that's in place , but that's not enough--people want it to be exactly like the situation is with Windows. But it isn't gonna be at the same level as Windows until it's at the same popularity as Windows, which requires it (apparently magically) to be much, much BETTER than Windows (or else, why switch from something that works well enough)! . A losing proposition if I ever saw one, which is why I just want to take this moment (in this probably obscure thread) to thank all the people that helped make my laptop work with Linux! You all seriously ROCK ! :)
Now, I understand if you choose to use Windows because the hardware (and software) support is better. But understand that
Finally--I somewhat agree about X. It'd be nice if a vendor could supply a .inf file to specify supported modes and an xorg.conf could be modular (that is, it could load various vendors' .inf files instead of having one big file). That said, setting up X on a modern Linux distribution is easy--point, click, and you're done (SuSE is what I've used recently; Red Hat had one too). If you're doing it The Hard Way, it's your own fault that it's not easy--"just because you can edit doesn't mean you should". :)
Oh, and the video suspend-to-disk/RAM thing. It's not anywhere as simple as you set it up to be. It's actually a pretty involved process, from what I've seen. There may be tools to help out, if you're interested. What notebook do you have, if you're still interested in making it work?
In conclusion, I wish I knew of an Apple for Linux--that is, a hardware vendor with the cojones to actually support Linux fully on their hardware ; none of this "winmodem doesn't work; no suspend to disk" crapola. To such a vendor, if one actually exists: I would give you (potentially quite a bit of) money!
It is worth noting that Windows has no accelated graphics support Out Of The Box--the vidcard vendor does all the heavy lifting. That is the reason Windows "just fucking work[s]"--do or die, natural selection, purely due to Microsoft's overwhelming marketshare.
Now, I'll give you that things are easier, but the way you phrased it really pisses me off. What can Linux do to make things Just Fucking Work like that?
And even after that, it'll be on par with Windows (in the Just Fucking Works department), and people will still use Windows instead (and whine because Linux is different)!
Sure, Windows is the best gaming OS, but purely because of its marketshare--all games and hardware work on it (or else the vendor would die or be relegated to a niche market). There's nothing inherent in Windows that makes it superior-- it's superior because it's superior .
[Interestingly, in another metric, we're far above Windows in the Just Fucking Works department. That metric is "hardware that works out of the box (aka Automagically) compared to all hardware that works on the platform, because we can't rely on vendors to do the hard work for us.]
Sorry; I just had to rant this morning. :)
On my home net, my ancient laptop serves files, including oggs. There's no point in streaming the audio--I just mount the filesystem from my PCs and mythtv box and play them as though they were local--the point of a networked filesystem. I can't imagine why you'd not be able to do the same thing in your setup.
Then again, in the much less probable, I keep hoping that IBM will release Linux Cell workstations and laptops.
Again, what is the point of such a test/study? We already know that Windows totally dominates pre-installs!
- ActiveX: This {is,is not} signed, do you want to trust it? It runs (iirc) as any other program on your PC. Downsides: terrible permissions granularity, Windows-only.
- Java Applets: This {is,is not} signed by foo and asks for permission to do bar, do you want to give it these permissions (e.g. disk access)? Runs in a sandbox, so access (unless signed and allowed and barring bugs) outside the sandbox is verboten. Downsides: For full functionality, requires Sun or Sun-compatible Java runtime, so is usually an extra download for users. For abridged functionality, you may wish to restrict your functionality to the ancient Java runtime 1.1.1, which is (at least mostly) implemented in Microsoft's Windows-Extended Java (also known as "Microsoft VM"), but will still likely be an additional (free) download for most users. I suspect Macs come bundled with Java, but I'm not certain.
- XUL: A mozilla-only technology, does applications via XPCOM, XML, and JavaScript. Downsides: Restricted functionality (unless you can install stuff for XPCOM, I think, I'm somewhat fuzzy on this) compared to other solutions; Mozilla-only, a (free) download for most users.
- XAML: Microsoft's take on XUL. Windows Vista only (if it's still included, which iirc it is), I believe it requires Microsoft's
.net, but I could be wrong.
- AJAX: entirely javascript in-browser. Downsides: requires good JavaScript compatibility.
- Plain old CGI: available in any browser. Downsides: very, very limited ease of use compared to other solutions, places very rigid restraints on the user-server interaction.
- Shockwave Flash: I have little experience with this outside of watching short animations and interactive websites with it. Downside: requires Shockwave Flash plugin (a problem on any non-x86 platform, last I knew, including x86_64!)
There are likely others, but these are probably the most common. Notably, several of these are quite cross-platform and provide little, if any, vendor lockin, and the security options of some are much better than the security options of others.Thanks for the feedback. I suspect that you're vastly undercounting recurring Windows costs (e.g. retraining), but neither of us has hard figures on the matter. I agree that a sudden change to Linux cold turkey would be expensive. Slowly spinning up Linux to keep your options open in the future would be a much more advisable tack to take.
I'd recommend at least keeping up with the Linux (and/or Mac) world at home. Buy a Linux or Mac box and keep up to speed on it, in case you can leverage the knowledge in the future. Purchase hardware and software that you know will work with Linux as well as with Windows--it helps in case you ever need/want to make the switch, and will give you leverage in negotiations. Additionally, ask your suppliers for support for non-Windows OSes, so that your business solution isn't being dictated to you instead of you deciding what you will be doing. They can't build it if you don't ask. Finally, Linux has some capabilities that Windows will never have--leverage these strengths when applicable, though it may not be until you get bigger that many of these strengths will be realized. Basically, keep your options open; you never know when you could be next to be sued into License 7.x!
I hope that the situation will change someday, that we will have a level playing field, but if too many people are like you, my hope dies. Maybe there's hope--Robber Barons of the past were overcome, maybe this one will too. It'll be a much harder row to hoe, though, due to the unique capabilities of knifing your competitors when you own the software & hardware.
I guess I have a question: What would it take Microsoft (or Linux) doing to make you consider switching? If the temperature is slowly ratcheted up, when do you jump out (or do you just boil)?
Not necessarily, but I cede the point. Note, however, that there are other things that can tip the balances.
Again, you don't have to assemble it yourself. You can, if you want to. Additionally, you can fix it yourself, which is the more apt analogy imho.
The more apt analogy is this: Your refigerator's compressor is broken. However, Kenmore kludged around it so that it worked with a special adaptor that they helpfully included, which notably only works with Power Company A. This isn't usually a big deal because Power Company A owns 90% of the electric market in your area.
However, there are much lower prices at Power Company B, and they're looking more and more appealing as Power Company A has been pushing its might to get Kenmore and other appliance vendors to do what it wants (such as bundle free 2-day deals with Power Company A for their new Broadband service, and they also provide special hookups that work better with Power Company A's emerging water services, a market which it's been eyeing for a while. Kenmore and others have even recently come out with water filtration and tap systems that require Power Company A's water service!). Not to mention the problems that pretty much only affect A's customers, since all the wiretapping and power-stealing tools target A's systems (and since it doesn't cost A any real money ("what, are you going to leave all your appliances behind?!"), they don't particularly care to make it much harder to steal or eavesdrop on you (though since Power Companies B and C are getting much more attention, this is changing))
But the problem is that, if you want to use your existing appliances with Power Company B, you need to figure out why almost all of your appliances seem to have minor, but annoying (and sometimes major and terribly annoying!) problems when you tried out Power Company B. Power Company B, trying to grab a little market share so that they can survive under A's foot, has provided, free of charge of course, an attachment for your appliances to help them use Power Company B's power. However, since they have to painstakingly reverse-engineer an exceptionally complicated device for each appliance (namely Kenmore's for your fridge, Panasonic's for your TV, and so on), this attachment works fairly well, but the results are not at all guaranteed. However, if you have friends who know how, or you know how yourself, you can make your appliances work with Power Company B. Unfortunately, since Power Company A has 90+% of the market, finding appliances which aren't reliant upon Power Company A is a difficult proposition, and most Power Company B customers either work hard to find appliances compatible with Power Company B (usually, they have to look on the internet, since essentially no vendor says it on the box), or they look for appliances that aren't too hard to get working with Power Company B and take their chances (which can also be difficult, since it often involves losing a little functionality, and the vendors make it even harder by changing entire motors in the same series, so you have to be pretty careful!) [As an aside, Power Company C has made a good place for itself in the market by providing pretty good service at somewhat higher prices, but you have to buy most of your appliances from them, and the appliances don't work with any other power company. To their credit, though, those appliances from others who support more than just Power Company A also support Power Company C on the box,
Anyhow, if Sony releases an official Linux kit for the PS3 before IBM releases some sort of Cell box (please, IBM! Give to us well-working and well-supported Linux notebooks and desktops! Be the Apple of Linux!), then it's quite possible I'll buy the PS3 + Linux kit, to test drive Cell. Uh, yeah. For the numerical computing only/i.... Riiiiight..... ;)
Additionally, for a game to be a used copy, it must necessarily have previously been sold and then re-sold. Assuming that the original purchaser truly resold it (and didn't retain a copy), you've still sold one copy to one person. You've not lost a sale, you've gained a user (over the lifespan of the game; the original purchaser is no longer a user, though was once).
Oh, I certainly do too. However, just because you have unprcedented power to make your customers' lives miserable in the effort to achieve a little more profit (there are certainly those that buy used who will buy a copy new if that avenue is closed off, but this comes at the expense of many more users).Software is extremely unlike many other things which have been sold in the past, in that the producers have unprecedented ability to modify their software to their customers' and competitors' benefit--or detriment.
Now I'm a Linux user and much more willing to shell out that kind of money if the game is good and has native Linux support, so there's one angle you could persue. ;) [thank you for UT2004, NWN, Doom3, and Quake4, amongst others!]
Unfortunately, I suspect "prevention" has much more to do with screwing the customers over (Even Better CD Checks and Licensing! Whoo! Just what I wanted--new ways for things to break so that I can't play the games I purchased from you [the CD check has to be the #1 reason I cannot play a game]!) than listening to the customers.
Such is my long-range plan: mini-itx box in a pretty box in the living room for playback/control of the Beefy MythBox in the server room, and various mini-itx stations throughout the house (e.g. kitchen) primarily for music playback.
UPDATE: actually, mounting the filesystem noexec is sufficient to stop ld-linux.so's maigc, it seems.
Quite right. I mixed those up. Too bad I'm already at minus geekpoints; I just lost more! ;)
As an example of the extra hurdle copying imposes, say you want to attack someone via a set of holes in Firefox. With /lib/ld-linux.so, you need only the following, if you can't make firefox itself do arbitrary things:
With out the ld-linux vector, you have to:
So it's not a huge hurdle, but it's there!
Actually, looking at it again, I suspect that you can't gain priveleges even if an suid file is +r, unless ld-linux.so is setuid/setgid.
It is, however, to be noted that: