Unfortunately Linux is going to have real problems dealing with multimedia unless things change _right now_ about how sound is accessed on Linux. Currently every multimedia app (except things that use esd - which in reality isn't very much) directly accesses the sound card via/dev/dsp - effectively locking out any other app that wants to make a noise. This _has_ to change to a proper driver model where we have real sound drivers and an API for different sound qualities and sound mixing. Christ - my Amiga had those in 1986. And NO esd doesn't cut it - it has to be STANDARD - i.e. part of the kernel. Unfortunately I can't see Linus budging on this issue, which makes me sad.
Anyone worth their salt knows that web benchmarks mean kak all - especially when they're designed to differentiate between software. What's important to web software these days is functionality - that's the main reason Apache is more popular than IIS - and staying that way. It's also the reason software like WebSite Pro from O'Reilly can survive in the face of the free IIS.
The key to Microsoft.com's stability is clustering. BIGTIME clustering. I think with a cluster a 99.5% uptime isn't that great - it means that at some point in time, for a few hours in the year, all the servers in the cluster are down. Not good.
I've got a PII-400 and am constantly stunned at the crap speed of some of these supposedly advanced WindowManagers/DE's. I'm reasonably happy with the kpanel and WindowMaker right now, but I have kfm running, and I don't know why - I never ever use it...
I guess ultimately power users migrate back to a CLI - that's how it was on my Amiga, that's how it is on the NT boxes at work, and its how my Linux box is heading too...
These aren't KDE themes - these are KWM themes. This is just adding in confusion into the pot. It'd be like saying changing the enlightenment theme was a gnome theme if you used the gnome panel.
I'm still waiting on QT themes because the standard Qt look is just plain butt ugly. I just hope they're not the memory hog that gtk themes are.
Efficiency wasn't the point I was trying to make. If I had the time and the money to waste teaching every lemon fresh out of University how to program cleanly (in perl or in any other language) I wouldn't still be in business. I don't apply perl to every domain under the sun - but I apply it to most of the stuff that I do - because it's the language I know best (I also know C++, Java, Oberon-2, Python, Pascal, VB (yes, really), JavaScript and some others). If I was writing something time-critical I wouldn't use perl, but generally the stuff I do (text processing and databases) the time is either not critical, or the limiting factor is in the database.
However, as a competent (I like to think _good_) perl programmer, everything I write is in modules and well documented.
The point about perl though is that a good programmer can write well structured modular code (take a look at the NNML module for a fantastic example - it's an NNTP server), and a not-so-good programmer can just get along with it. The same can't really be said of many other languages, where you have to learn all the constructs and the right way to do things.
And as for the example of inference - Perl manages to infer what you want to do very well (just like english). The sentance you write makes sense in the right context, the same can be said of perl programs. But let's not get carried away - perl is only context sensitive to the current statement - not across multiple statements (unless you count retval overloading).
Language advocacy is futile isn't it... Still - can be worth it sometimes - it's the reason I checked out Python - and went back to perl.
Unfortunately these academic languages don't solve many real world problems - only a subset. Perl solves many real world problems. I recall languages like Haskell, which is great for cute little (and some large) graph problems, but shite at text processing, GUI's, sound, networking, etc. Personally I do lots of different jobs at my work (text processing, GUI's, networking, graph problems, etc) and it helps me to have one language that can do them all.
However, I would never force anyone to use perl if they hated it, like one poster here.
Messes get the work done though. It tends to be the case that when I say something in english that isn't quite what I should have said, people understand anyway. Perl is the same.
You can argue that this isn't a good way to design a language until the cows come home, but it works for me, especially if you manage projects - less competent people can produce the goods, and more competent people can produce good goods. I've had to work with less competent people before and its better to have an end product than have to train them to program right (this is because of time constraints, not because I think it's a better thing to do).
In the early days of MS Bill wrote an essay on how Closed source and paying money for software was better than the current trend of Universities to give away their s/w. I can't recall a reference but I assure you it's true.
You could use Samba to export the directory instead of NFS - that would work in much the same way (although without ACLs).
I do agree with the point to some extent - although I think it is one of the areas to cause the largest headaches on NT as well. Ever tried dealing with permissions problems on a server for NT? Nightmare.
Why do I constantly hear things like "Linux won't natively support java any time soon". Err, it does already, and has done for some time - last time I compiled my kernel it was right there: "Support for Java binaries"...
Have I got this confused (it works on my machine - perhaps I'm the only one) or is this FUD?
It was NT 3.51 that was certified C2 secure. They never had it re-evaluated for NT4. I find it hilarious that the C2 certification is still bandied about for an OS that you can't even buy any more...
I don't know about anyone else, but I think it's too early. I know you can't wait forever, but there's one thing expected of point-oh releases - stability. Sure gnome is reasonably stable given its development time, but I can't imagine its improved _that_ much since 0.99.3 that I'm using.
I was just saying to a co-worker: "Now that the PIII is released, I wonder how long it will take someone to release a [Linux] kernel patch that prevents the serial # from being accessed"...
Ok - but most Linux installations as they are installed by default have this flaw. That's the point. You could argue that all the IIS bugs have been server software problems not OS problems too. The point is - the problem exists (but at least we'll get a fix quicker than an NT service pack ) --
You've got me totally wrong (and I don't know how - I re-read what I wrote) - I think this is totally totally wrong. Terrorism is evil - I've lived right in it - I used to do a lot of living on army camps - and believe me, that can be very scary.
The Demo is of QNX (not Neutrino), and it's nowhere near a full OS - you can't play around with it to do anything decent. I've tried the demo. I liked it. But it's not possible to use it as your everyday OS, and I can't come up with criticisms of the system as a whole based on that short demo. All I can say is "Yes, they have a reasonable web browser". --
Duh! I was asking about QNX's bad points. That demo doesn't show you jack-shit, except you can compress an OS with browser onto a floppy. Well we already had that with the Amiga, so it was nothing new.
Tell me about QNX's (or preferably Neutrino's) bad points please. --
Oh puke - you just showed me (the link) a diagram of Linux. What's the point in that? I run linux and love it, but it's not an OS for game players or graphic artists or a set top box, or any of the other markets AOS5 is aiming for. --
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately Linux is going to have real problems dealing with multimedia unless things change _right now_ about how sound is accessed on Linux. Currently every multimedia app (except things that use esd - which in reality isn't very much) directly accesses the sound card via /dev/dsp - effectively locking out any other app that wants to make a noise. This _has_ to change to a proper driver model where we have real sound drivers and an API for different sound qualities and sound mixing. Christ - my Amiga had those in 1986. And NO esd doesn't cut it - it has to be STANDARD - i.e. part of the kernel. Unfortunately I can't see Linus budging on this issue, which makes me sad.
Matt.
Anyone worth their salt knows that web benchmarks mean kak all - especially when they're designed to differentiate between software. What's important to web software these days is functionality - that's the main reason Apache is more popular than IIS - and staying that way. It's also the reason software like WebSite Pro from O'Reilly can survive in the face of the free IIS.
The key to Microsoft.com's stability is clustering. BIGTIME clustering. I think with a cluster a 99.5% uptime isn't that great - it means that at some point in time, for a few hours in the year, all the servers in the cluster are down. Not good.
I've got a PII-400 and am constantly stunned at the crap speed of some of these supposedly advanced WindowManagers/DE's. I'm reasonably happy with the kpanel and WindowMaker right now, but I have kfm running, and I don't know why - I never ever use it...
I guess ultimately power users migrate back to a CLI - that's how it was on my Amiga, that's how it is on the NT boxes at work, and its how my Linux box is heading too...
These aren't KDE themes - these are KWM themes. This is just adding in confusion into the pot. It'd be like saying changing the enlightenment theme was a gnome theme if you used the gnome panel.
I'm still waiting on QT themes because the standard Qt look is just plain butt ugly. I just hope they're not the memory hog that gtk themes are.
Matt (who aches to have MUI back).
Anyone got any mirrors?
So tell him to use KDE. Simple.
Efficiency wasn't the point I was trying to make. If I had the time and the money to waste teaching every lemon fresh out of University how to program cleanly (in perl or in any other language) I wouldn't still be in business. I don't apply perl to every domain under the sun - but I apply it to most of the stuff that I do - because it's the language I know best (I also know C++, Java, Oberon-2, Python, Pascal, VB (yes, really), JavaScript and some others). If I was writing something time-critical I wouldn't use perl, but generally the stuff I do (text processing and databases) the time is either not critical, or the limiting factor is in the database.
However, as a competent (I like to think _good_) perl programmer, everything I write is in modules and well documented.
The point about perl though is that a good programmer can write well structured modular code (take a look at the NNML module for a fantastic example - it's an NNTP server), and a not-so-good programmer can just get along with it. The same can't really be said of many other languages, where you have to learn all the constructs and the right way to do things.
And as for the example of inference - Perl manages to infer what you want to do very well (just like english). The sentance you write makes sense in the right context, the same can be said of perl programs. But let's not get carried away - perl is only context sensitive to the current statement - not across multiple statements (unless you count retval overloading).
Language advocacy is futile isn't it... Still - can be worth it sometimes - it's the reason I checked out Python - and went back to perl.
Unfortunately these academic languages don't solve many real world problems - only a subset. Perl solves many real world problems. I recall languages like Haskell, which is great for cute little (and some large) graph problems, but shite at text processing, GUI's, sound, networking, etc. Personally I do lots of different jobs at my work (text processing, GUI's, networking, graph problems, etc) and it helps me to have one language that can do them all.
However, I would never force anyone to use perl if they hated it, like one poster here.
Messes get the work done though. It tends to be the case that when I say something in english that isn't quite what I should have said, people understand anyway. Perl is the same.
You can argue that this isn't a good way to design a language until the cows come home, but it works for me, especially if you manage projects - less competent people can produce the goods, and more competent people can produce good goods. I've had to work with less competent people before and its better to have an end product than have to train them to program right (this is because of time constraints, not because I think it's a better thing to do).
Matt.
In the early days of MS Bill wrote an essay on how Closed source and paying money for software was better than the current trend of Universities to give away their s/w. I can't recall a reference but I assure you it's true.
Yes - apparently it is just you...
67
+30
+ 3
----
100 !!!
Stunning.
You could use Samba to export the directory instead of NFS - that would work in much the same way (although without ACLs).
I do agree with the point to some extent - although I think it is one of the areas to cause the largest headaches on NT as well. Ever tried dealing with permissions problems on a server for NT? Nightmare.
Why do I constantly hear things like "Linux won't natively support java any time soon". Err, it does already, and has done for some time - last time I compiled my kernel it was right there: "Support for Java binaries"...
Have I got this confused (it works on my machine - perhaps I'm the only one) or is this FUD?
It was NT 3.51 that was certified C2 secure. They never had it re-evaluated for NT4. I find it hilarious that the C2 certification is still bandied about for an OS that you can't even buy any more...
I don't know about anyone else, but I think it's too early. I know you can't wait forever, but there's one thing expected of point-oh releases - stability. Sure gnome is reasonably stable given its development time, but I can't imagine its improved _that_ much since 0.99.3 that I'm using.
Let the flames begin...
Wouldn't have bought the Jag if I didn't want to do 120 ;-)
Hmm - it'd be interesting as a noise reducer though...
--
That would sound terrible when I'm doing 120mph...
--
I was just saying to a co-worker: "Now that the PIII is released, I wonder how long it will take someone to release a [Linux] kernel patch that prevents the serial # from being accessed"...
Good work.
--
Ok - but most Linux installations as they are installed by default have this flaw. That's the point. You could argue that all the IIS bugs have been server software problems not OS problems too. The point is - the problem exists (but at least we'll get a fix quicker than an NT service pack )
--
The point is NT spawns new threads, not new processes. And NT doesn't have a fingerd (or a whole lot of other daemons).
Not that I think NT won't suffer from other similar DoS's - I'm sure it will.
--
You've got me totally wrong (and I don't know how - I re-read what I wrote) - I think this is totally totally wrong. Terrorism is evil - I've lived right in it - I used to do a lot of living on army camps - and believe me, that can be very scary.
Matt.
--
The Demo is of QNX (not Neutrino), and it's nowhere near a full OS - you can't play around with it to do anything decent. I've tried the demo. I liked it. But it's not possible to use it as your everyday OS, and I can't come up with criticisms of the system as a whole based on that short demo. All I can say is "Yes, they have a reasonable web browser".
--
Duh! I was asking about QNX's bad points. That demo doesn't show you jack-shit, except you can compress an OS with browser onto a floppy. Well we already had that with the Amiga, so it was nothing new.
Tell me about QNX's (or preferably Neutrino's) bad points please.
--
Oh puke - you just showed me (the link) a diagram of Linux. What's the point in that? I run linux and love it, but it's not an OS for game players or graphic artists or a set top box, or any of the other markets AOS5 is aiming for.
--