Ok, this is great. We now have at least three appliance-like devices that can take ripped cds and make them available over a network (comments about how the mac mini already does this aside). But where are the clients? This is the missing link. Sure, you can buy some crappy mp3 players that will let you browse a gigantic list of mp3s on a tiny lcd display, and won't support multiple formats or playlists or have high quality audio outputs for your stereo system...c'mon, we need a good client.
What I want:
1) A miniature box with networking capabilities that can take multiple input formats, and generate high quality audio output (something I can put in every room where I have an amp and a set of speakers). By high quality audio output, I mean support for 5.1 or 7.1 surround in addition to just plain stereo. Doesn't need to be powered, I can plug in my own amps.
2) Ability to configure and play music from the display. So, if I'm sitting in the room and want to listen to some Bach, I can just walk over, press a few buttons, and adjust the volume.
3) Ability to push music/playlists to the client from a networked computer or the server. So if I am sitting in the computer room, and I want Ben Folds playing in the kitchen and Beastie Boys playing in the living room, I can just click a few buttons and have it happen.
Seriously, the server is there and has been there for a while. Now we need some quality clients to get your house really wired up. And yes, I'm aware I can set up a computer in every room, and fiddle with software settings and audio outputs...maybe write some custom software. The idea is to make this an appliance. Out of the box, easy to setup and just use.
Yeah, a lot of people will resist trying the latest new thing, especially if "everybody else is doing it." If they see it in the newspaper, computer experts recommend it, and their friends tell them it's great, they turn and start running the other direction. It's a weird part of human psychology. I remember about four years ago, long after IE had won the browser wars, a lot of people were still clinging to Netscape 4, despite it being old, buggy, and broken. If IE hadn't been installed by default (on macs as wells as pcs), it would have had a much harder time getting ahead...but then that was the whole point of the antitrust trial wasn't it.
Well, my knowledge of nuclear engineering is pretty basic, but I don't believe cracking will be a problem provided the fuel is inspected on a regular basis. The critical mass is dependent on the fuel geometry, the most efficient being a sphere. Once you break a pebble open, you have to pack much more of the fuel together to achieve a critical mass. Filling in the gaps of the mesh with crushed pebbles will decrease your efficiency, not increase it.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Open Graphics Project in this thread. With any luck the card will be released just in time for Cairo to take advantage of it.
Thats why Windows is targetted and not Linux - you know how to protect your Linux machine, my parents don't know how to secure their Windows machine.
No, that's exactly my point. Yes, all software has bugs, but Windows definitely has *more* of the remotely exploitable kind. This is not because Microsoft programmers are stupid. It is because Microsoft did not originally write their code with security in mind. An email client should not automatically execute scripts. A web page should not be able to execute arbitrary code on your computer. The default Windows install should not accept incoming connections from an untrusted network. This is not about number of bugs, per se, because, yes, all software has the occasional buffer overflow. It is about secure programming practices. One way to lessen the amount of spyware on your machine is to use a browser (ex: Firefox, Opera) that doesn't support insecure ActiveX controls. I'm sure Windows security holes get more attention by script-kiddies, but marketshare is not the whole story.
Their markets don't consist of my mom and dad.
Yet, one would expect to see remotely exploitable holes in *server* software because, well, they accept connections from untrusted sources. You wouldn't expect a media player to unless it is doing something it shouldn't be doing. My point is that, regardless of marketshare, it is expected for some software to be attacked (and occasionally exploited), and for other software it shouldn't be an issue.
And if you didn't boot into Linux for many months resulting in lots of unpatched security holes, and there were a ton of people trying to attack Linux boxes because Linux controlled 95% of the market, you'd have the same experience there.
Ummm...I think this sentence says it all and more. Many months going by does not result in lots of remotely exploitable security holes that allow spyware to end up on your computer from just browsing the Internet with Firefox (or any browser that runs on linux for that matter). Linux does not control 95% of the market, and it never will because there is strength in variety. Even if 95% of the market consisted of people running linux, it would be extremely unlikely for them to be running the same linux distribution. Also, there are a ton of applications that control large amounts of their respective markets (Apache, OpenSSH, Samba) that do not suffer a plague of security holes, so that argument is generally bullshit to begin with. Any properly written application (especially one that opens up privileged services or allows remote access to the machine) should anticipate anybody and everybody trying to attack it to get at the system underneath.
No, linux isn't perfect. But that doesn't mean Windows doesn't have some serious problems.
No, you didn't. You pretty much said "all of the applications on Linux suck and are ugly and it is hard to use." But that wasn't my point anyway. My point is that people have different opinions, sometimes good reasons for those opinions, and they express them openly in this forum. Some of the comments are pro-Linux and some are pro-Windows. Some of the comments are constructive, informed, and thoughtful, and others are not. Some are based on just plain wrong information or faulty arguments, which is fine. The purpose of this forum is to post and voice your disagreement, not to rant about how we should all just get along.
>>Nor does it always get modded +5 Informative as you seem to be claiming.
Look around you. Obviously you're mistaken.
If you really think that you need to look around more carefully. What I see is down-moderation of aggressive rants, flamebaits, and loud bitching (either of the self-righteous indignant kind, or the everybody who disagrees with me is an idiot kind). I see up-moderation of most well thought out and informed (or perhaps humorous) posts, whether they be pro-Microsoft or not. There are people who use the moderation system to endorse their own opinion, but that doesn't happen as often as you seem to think.
Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I don't have to agree with it. We could just sit here while you say "Linux sux, MacOSX is the best" and I could say "MacOSX is nice and cute, but I prefer Linux for my everyday needs" and then we could just "stare" at each other. Or we could actually present arguments for why we like one or the other in an attempt to justify our opinions.
If you love OSX and just want to be left alone, fine, but then there is really no point in reading or posting threads like these. Having and posting a contrary opinion does not make me a zealot. Nor does it always get modded +5 Informative as you seem to be claiming.
You have a production Web Server, Application Server and a Database Server. All run RH AS 3.0. You pay for those with support because they are mission critical.
You now need to setup an exact duplicate setup for Testing.
You then must setup a very similar setup for development, but in this case you may have multiple development boxes.
Well, for your production servers you should really have the support contract (as you said). For the testing boxes, you don't need the AS option, so you can go with either ES or WS (software is the same). For these you also only need to renew the RedHat Network subscription, not the entire support package (unless you want it). For the development boxes you can just use WS or Fedora. What do you consider a supported distribution? If all you need is updates, Fedora is there. If you want to be able to talk to someone on the phone or have them come out for an on-site visit, well, you will have to pay for it.
Could you do that with Fedora? yes but when the system(s) got out from "under the raidar" operations people would generally ask if it is on a supported platform. The answer use to be yes. Now it is no.
I understand what you are saying, and I'm not trying to be overzealous about RedHat (I prefer Debian, actually), but you either get free software with no support, or you buy the support. As I said in an earlier posting, if all you want is patches and updates, you can already get them in Fedora. So if you don't mind installating a distribution, testing your software, tweaking, patching, deploying, and maintaining all by yourself, you can do the same thing with Fedora as you used to be able to do with RedHat. However, a lot of people don't want to do that, especially in a production environment, which is why RedHat sells support and people buy it.
With respect to the cost of Windows, you need to compare apples to apples. Windows Server 2003 along with a hefty support package (which you do have to buy) most certainly does not cost less than RedHat AS. If all you want to do, though, is setup a WinXP box with file/print sharing, you can do that for free with Fedora. Or you can pay for RedHat ES and get support and get a bunch of other services that WinXP doesn't have.
Have you actually tried talking to the RedHat folks about your situation? They are usually pretty reasonable, which is why they now offer an academic package. Universities need site-licensing options. I'm sure you could get a custom support package if there isn't a way to get what you want from the already available plans.
Ummm...go to their website and download it for free. Yes, you can. It isn't openly publicized, but you can get the source packages (without support, which means no RedHat Network) of the advanced server distribution from their download servers. Here is a mirror. Now, you can quibble about them only distributing source packages, but a) it is already more than is required by the GPL (they don't have to host the packages) and b) there is already a free cutting-edge distribution that fills in the place of the old retail version (Fedora). The only reason to go after AS is if you need the support package, otherwise the only differences are in package versions (AS software is mostly out of date, which is what you want if you are running a server).
Ummm...I think you are mixing some things up. Here is the way I remember things, although I could be wrong.
RedHat 7.1 through RedHat 9 - retail boxed version, only 60 days installation support, $60-$80; you can also download it for free (but no support)
post RedHat 9, retail boxed version no longer exists, you can still download it for free (both Fedora and source packages of ES/AS)
Redhat ES/AS - tested, debugged, optimized version that is targeted at business audiences, price jumps around but includes support package (updates, patches, phone, on-site, software/hardware compatibility), support contract has to be renewed every year, support contract is tied to a particular server
Support is what RedHat sells. They don't make any money distributing the software. They charge competitively for their support contracts, and they do a damn good job. If you don't want/need the support, you can still download the software and distribute it freely.
Also, it should be noted, there is a difference between closed ports and blocked ports. On a typical MacOS X machine the ports are closed, i.e: there aren't services running that are bound to privileged ports and listening to outside traffic. On WinXP SP2, the ports are still open (check it with nmap), but they are blocked by the firewall. As has been said many times before in other threads, securing a machine happens on multiple levels. A firewall is only one level, and it cannot be used to supplant all of the others (such as actually closing ports for services that don't need to be exposed to outside traffic). All an attacker needs to do is get through your firewall, which may or may not be difficult depending on how it is configured, if that is the only thing protecting your machine.
My limited experience with the popup blocking offered in SP2 is that it is a poorly hacked together filter for IE. The last time I used it, it wouldn't distinguish between requested popups (when a user clicks a link) and unrequested popups (concealed in an onLoad statement). So if you go to a site that uses popups for actual functionality you have to turn the popup blocking off. It also doesn't, as far as I know, allow for control of other javascript "features" like moving/resizing windows and adjusting the status bar. Trust me, you can get the features that are in Firefox in IE from service packs and third-party plugins, but they just aren't implemented as well. Tabbed browsing and type ahead find are probably the two most useful features I have ever seen implemented in a browser, and I haven't seen good working implementations of those for IE.
I think what you meant to say is that the US is the richest country in the world. Which is not surprising considering things like our size, historical providence, AND political stance (which influences things like our foreign trade policy). Our political policies and general attitudes have brought a lot of money into this country, but does that make us the most successful? Is money the only important thing in the world? Are people living here happier then, say, people living in Germany just because they might be making more money?
So what you're saying is to get reliability out of a Windows server you need to be running a cluster. But to get reliability out of a linux server, you don't? I mean, if linux can deliver 4 nines with one machine, and Windows requires a cluster to deliver that kind of reliability, then one is more stable than the other, right? Anyway, this discussion isn't about stability, it is about security.
How do any of those present a better interface? How does taking GConf and dumping it to a large file result in a better interface? The problem is organization of a lot of information. Changing the storage method does not improve the interface. Besides, what you are saying doesn't even make sense. A treeview layout with all of the options doubly organized by application and purpose, with a search tool and context-sensitive help, is worse than a dump of all 500 or so options into a flat text file for you to scroll through with your text editor? Get real.
I understand and like the unix way of storing configuration information in text files, but GConf is not the huge betrayal your are making it out to be. I think it is a well thought out system that solves a problem. Everybody would like organization of preferences to be better, but blindly advocating the use of an unstructured flat file just because it is the "unix way" is dumb.
The way I remember it, GConf was created because it was not practical to store hundreds of little text configuration files. This was pre-ReiserFS. They tried the text files, but performance and storage efficiency was crap. So they moved to a database. Big deal...it is an open non-obfuscated format that anyone can read/create an editor for. If you can come up with a better interface for gconf-editor, go for it. But organizing hundreds of preferences in some logical fashion for convenient browsing is not an easy task.
And having actually used the Windows registry, GConf is nothing like it. GConf is for storing preferences. The Windows registry is for storing just about everything an app could need. And on top of that, it is a binary obfuscated format. If you think gconf-editor has a bad interface, regedit is a hundred times worse.
Can OO or StarOffice flawlessly open 100% of word documents?
No. Obfuscation of the office document formats has made this impossible. Staroffice can't do it. Neither can WordPerfect or even Microsoft Office (yes, it mangles its own documents sometimes). However, if you export to rtf first, all of these programs will open it flawlessly. I hardly consider a few hiccups here and there as criteria for "not being ready." There is a transition barrier, yes, but Linux itself *is* capable of both being on the desktop and replacing a number of Windows installations on the desktop.
Uhhh, try your distributions install cd. Since you are running Debian, I gather you are comfortable with compiling your own software. However, with Mandrake or Suse, I can guarantee you will never have to do that. When new software is released, you will have to wait for your distribution to package it, but you will be able to install the latest version without compiling. This really isn't any different in the Windows world. You can't install Office 2003 until, *gasp*, it is made available. The difference on linux is that the source is made available a touch sooner than distribution specific binaries. Since the source isn't even available for most Windows software, I don't consider this a bad thing.
Compile. Binary. Server. There goes 95% of users. Binary. Packages. There go the rest.
This makes no sense. If you want something on your computer, you have to install the software. So click the little Openoffice.org button during installation and poof, it is on your computer. No compiles, none of the hassle you seem to be implying. On Windows you have to pop in the cd and click setup.exe, so how is this any different?
Your issue with off the shelf software and hardware availability is understandable, but
a) It is something that is out of the control of the open source community for the most part. Vendors have to decide it is profitable to sell commercial software on linux, and like I said earlier, I don't think this will ever happen.
b) Nobody said a switch from Windows to linux would be painless. It doesn't matter how much usability on linux improves, there will always be a transition period when you switch your os. Once your dad realizes he no longer has to buy his bridge game, that it and a lot of the rest of his software is just plain free, I'm sure he will perfectly happy with the concept. He won't understand it at first, but that is to be expected.
Is the current ease-of-ownership remotely near that of Windows for the casual or ignorant user? Hell no.
Well, I am certainly not an ignorant user. I just spent the last week wrestling with WinXP, trying to get it to install on a new computer with a SATA drive. Funny how I can just pop in a Gentoo livecd and have it work, but I have to rebuild the fucking iso to get the Windows setup program to even start! Once it is installed, then I have to run around screwing with group policies and such to make the desktop usable for all of the people who will use it. The new XP control panel, theme, and start menu are terrible. Whoops, media player doesn't work. Let's see "internal application error", that sure is helpful. Google...oh, I just have reregister the vbscript.dll and tweak some registry entries...doesn't work. Now what? Finally, sacrifice a goat and it works. I'm sorry, some things about Windows are nice, but it not a model operating system for usability, especially when something doesn't work out of the box and you have to fix it.
Get real! Why do people still say this crap? With a modern linux distribution you do not *have* to compile anything ever. You want a server, install the binary server packages. You want a desktop, install the binary desktop packages. Now you certainly *can* compile things, which allows for more flexibility if you want it, but you don't have to. If you don't want to compile things, you have to wait for the latest binary packages to be made available, just like any other os (except usually not for free).
You can't buy linux software in stores because, well, you can't really sell something that is not meant to be a retail product. And yes, you do have to run linux software on linux. It is as unreasonable to expect Windows software to run on linux as it is to expect Windows software to run on a Mac. Commercial vendors may start writing software for linux, but that is up to the vendors. Personally, I don't think it will ever happen to a large extent because free software equivalents are usually available for most of the silly things that commercial vendors try to sell you.
Hardware support is also quite good, and a large portion of off the shelf hardware will work out of the box. This isn't perfect, but it is certainly better than it used to be. And it is getting better all the time.
How about a city bus? Here in Boston, they're downright filthy,
So fix up the damn bus! That's what I hate about Boston. All of the public transportation is filthy, unmaintained, and slow. On the other coast (in Portland and even Seattle), buses are clean, efficient, and on schedule. The problem isn't the bus; it is MBTA.
I recently made the switch from Windows XP to Gentoo on my primary desktop.
Why in the world did you pick Gentoo as your first distro (or is it)? I love Gentoo and I use it on my own systems, but it is a high maintenance distro. It is good for tweakers, but not people who just want to get work done. If you are advanced enough to skip Mandrake, I recommend Debian. Quick to get up and running, good package management system, all of the goodies (nvidia drivers, 2.6 kernel,...) supported. It takes a bit more work to set up than, say Redhat, but you end up with a nice stable and secure system that will run without a hitch.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, this is great. We now have at least three appliance-like devices that can take ripped cds and make them available over a network (comments about how the mac mini already does this aside). But where are the clients? This is the missing link. Sure, you can buy some crappy mp3 players that will let you browse a gigantic list of mp3s on a tiny lcd display, and won't support multiple formats or playlists or have high quality audio outputs for your stereo system...c'mon, we need a good client.
What I want:
1) A miniature box with networking capabilities that can take multiple input formats, and generate high quality audio output (something I can put in every room where I have an amp and a set of speakers). By high quality audio output, I mean support for 5.1 or 7.1 surround in addition to just plain stereo. Doesn't need to be powered, I can plug in my own amps.
2) Ability to configure and play music from the display. So, if I'm sitting in the room and want to listen to some Bach, I can just walk over, press a few buttons, and adjust the volume.
3) Ability to push music/playlists to the client from a networked computer or the server. So if I am sitting in the computer room, and I want Ben Folds playing in the kitchen and Beastie Boys playing in the living room, I can just click a few buttons and have it happen.
Seriously, the server is there and has been there for a while. Now we need some quality clients to get your house really wired up. And yes, I'm aware I can set up a computer in every room, and fiddle with software settings and audio outputs...maybe write some custom software. The idea is to make this an appliance. Out of the box, easy to setup and just use.
Yeah, a lot of people will resist trying the latest new thing, especially if "everybody else is doing it." If they see it in the newspaper, computer experts recommend it, and their friends tell them it's great, they turn and start running the other direction. It's a weird part of human psychology. I remember about four years ago, long after IE had won the browser wars, a lot of people were still clinging to Netscape 4, despite it being old, buggy, and broken. If IE hadn't been installed by default (on macs as wells as pcs), it would have had a much harder time getting ahead...but then that was the whole point of the antitrust trial wasn't it.
Well, my knowledge of nuclear engineering is pretty basic, but I don't believe cracking will be a problem provided the fuel is inspected on a regular basis. The critical mass is dependent on the fuel geometry, the most efficient being a sphere. Once you break a pebble open, you have to pack much more of the fuel together to achieve a critical mass. Filling in the gaps of the mesh with crushed pebbles will decrease your efficiency, not increase it.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Open Graphics Project in this thread. With any luck the card will be released just in time for Cairo to take advantage of it.
Yeah, and did you notice it is because they preload it in memory and leave it there, kind of like Office. Check your process list sometime...
Thats why Windows is targetted and not Linux - you know how to protect your Linux machine, my parents don't know how to secure their Windows machine.
No, that's exactly my point. Yes, all software has bugs, but Windows definitely has *more* of the remotely exploitable kind. This is not because Microsoft programmers are stupid. It is because Microsoft did not originally write their code with security in mind. An email client should not automatically execute scripts. A web page should not be able to execute arbitrary code on your computer. The default Windows install should not accept incoming connections from an untrusted network. This is not about number of bugs, per se, because, yes, all software has the occasional buffer overflow. It is about secure programming practices. One way to lessen the amount of spyware on your machine is to use a browser (ex: Firefox, Opera) that doesn't support insecure ActiveX controls. I'm sure Windows security holes get more attention by script-kiddies, but marketshare is not the whole story.
Their markets don't consist of my mom and dad.
Yet, one would expect to see remotely exploitable holes in *server* software because, well, they accept connections from untrusted sources. You wouldn't expect a media player to unless it is doing something it shouldn't be doing. My point is that, regardless of marketshare, it is expected for some software to be attacked (and occasionally exploited), and for other software it shouldn't be an issue.
And if you didn't boot into Linux for many months resulting in lots of unpatched security holes, and there were a ton of people trying to attack Linux boxes because Linux controlled 95% of the market, you'd have the same experience there.
Ummm...I think this sentence says it all and more. Many months going by does not result in lots of remotely exploitable security holes that allow spyware to end up on your computer from just browsing the Internet with Firefox (or any browser that runs on linux for that matter). Linux does not control 95% of the market, and it never will because there is strength in variety. Even if 95% of the market consisted of people running linux, it would be extremely unlikely for them to be running the same linux distribution. Also, there are a ton of applications that control large amounts of their respective markets (Apache, OpenSSH, Samba) that do not suffer a plague of security holes, so that argument is generally bullshit to begin with. Any properly written application (especially one that opens up privileged services or allows remote access to the machine) should anticipate anybody and everybody trying to attack it to get at the system underneath.
No, linux isn't perfect. But that doesn't mean Windows doesn't have some serious problems.
Um. I did. Go read it again.
No, you didn't. You pretty much said "all of the applications on Linux suck and are ugly and it is hard to use." But that wasn't my point anyway. My point is that people have different opinions, sometimes good reasons for those opinions, and they express them openly in this forum. Some of the comments are pro-Linux and some are pro-Windows. Some of the comments are constructive, informed, and thoughtful, and others are not. Some are based on just plain wrong information or faulty arguments, which is fine. The purpose of this forum is to post and voice your disagreement, not to rant about how we should all just get along.
>>Nor does it always get modded +5 Informative as you seem to be claiming.
Look around you. Obviously you're mistaken.
If you really think that you need to look around more carefully. What I see is down-moderation of aggressive rants, flamebaits, and loud bitching (either of the self-righteous indignant kind, or the everybody who disagrees with me is an idiot kind). I see up-moderation of most well thought out and informed (or perhaps humorous) posts, whether they be pro-Microsoft or not. There are people who use the moderation system to endorse their own opinion, but that doesn't happen as often as you seem to think.
Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I don't have to agree with it. We could just sit here while you say "Linux sux, MacOSX is the best" and I could say "MacOSX is nice and cute, but I prefer Linux for my everyday needs" and then we could just "stare" at each other. Or we could actually present arguments for why we like one or the other in an attempt to justify our opinions.
If you love OSX and just want to be left alone, fine, but then there is really no point in reading or posting threads like these. Having and posting a contrary opinion does not make me a zealot. Nor does it always get modded +5 Informative as you seem to be claiming.
You have a production Web Server, Application Server and a Database Server. All run RH AS 3.0. You pay for those with support because they are mission critical.
You now need to setup an exact duplicate setup for Testing.
You then must setup a very similar setup for development, but in this case you may have multiple development boxes.
Well, for your production servers you should really have the support contract (as you said). For the testing boxes, you don't need the AS option, so you can go with either ES or WS (software is the same). For these you also only need to renew the RedHat Network subscription, not the entire support package (unless you want it). For the development boxes you can just use WS or Fedora. What do you consider a supported distribution? If all you need is updates, Fedora is there. If you want to be able to talk to someone on the phone or have them come out for an on-site visit, well, you will have to pay for it.
Could you do that with Fedora? yes but when the system(s) got out from "under the raidar" operations people would generally ask if it is on a supported platform. The answer use to be yes. Now it is no.
I understand what you are saying, and I'm not trying to be overzealous about RedHat (I prefer Debian, actually), but you either get free software with no support, or you buy the support. As I said in an earlier posting, if all you want is patches and updates, you can already get them in Fedora. So if you don't mind installating a distribution, testing your software, tweaking, patching, deploying, and maintaining all by yourself, you can do the same thing with Fedora as you used to be able to do with RedHat. However, a lot of people don't want to do that, especially in a production environment, which is why RedHat sells support and people buy it.
With respect to the cost of Windows, you need to compare apples to apples. Windows Server 2003 along with a hefty support package (which you do have to buy) most certainly does not cost less than RedHat AS. If all you want to do, though, is setup a WinXP box with file/print sharing, you can do that for free with Fedora. Or you can pay for RedHat ES and get support and get a bunch of other services that WinXP doesn't have.
Have you actually tried talking to the RedHat folks about your situation? They are usually pretty reasonable, which is why they now offer an academic package. Universities need site-licensing options. I'm sure you could get a custom support package if there isn't a way to get what you want from the already available plans.
Ummm...go to their website and download it for free. Yes, you can. It isn't openly publicized, but you can get the source packages (without support, which means no RedHat Network) of the advanced server distribution from their download servers. Here is a mirror. Now, you can quibble about them only distributing source packages, but a) it is already more than is required by the GPL (they don't have to host the packages) and b) there is already a free cutting-edge distribution that fills in the place of the old retail version (Fedora). The only reason to go after AS is if you need the support package, otherwise the only differences are in package versions (AS software is mostly out of date, which is what you want if you are running a server).
Ummm...I think you are mixing some things up. Here is the way I remember things, although I could be wrong.
RedHat 7.1 through RedHat 9 - retail boxed version, only 60 days installation support, $60-$80; you can also download it for free (but no support)
post RedHat 9, retail boxed version no longer exists, you can still download it for free (both Fedora and source packages of ES/AS)
Redhat ES/AS - tested, debugged, optimized version that is targeted at business audiences, price jumps around but includes support package (updates, patches, phone, on-site, software/hardware compatibility), support contract has to be renewed every year, support contract is tied to a particular server
Support is what RedHat sells. They don't make any money distributing the software. They charge competitively for their support contracts, and they do a damn good job. If you don't want/need the support, you can still download the software and distribute it freely.
Also, it should be noted, there is a difference between closed ports and blocked ports. On a typical MacOS X machine the ports are closed, i.e: there aren't services running that are bound to privileged ports and listening to outside traffic. On WinXP SP2, the ports are still open (check it with nmap), but they are blocked by the firewall. As has been said many times before in other threads, securing a machine happens on multiple levels. A firewall is only one level, and it cannot be used to supplant all of the others (such as actually closing ports for services that don't need to be exposed to outside traffic). All an attacker needs to do is get through your firewall, which may or may not be difficult depending on how it is configured, if that is the only thing protecting your machine.
My limited experience with the popup blocking offered in SP2 is that it is a poorly hacked together filter for IE. The last time I used it, it wouldn't distinguish between requested popups (when a user clicks a link) and unrequested popups (concealed in an onLoad statement). So if you go to a site that uses popups for actual functionality you have to turn the popup blocking off. It also doesn't, as far as I know, allow for control of other javascript "features" like moving/resizing windows and adjusting the status bar. Trust me, you can get the features that are in Firefox in IE from service packs and third-party plugins, but they just aren't implemented as well. Tabbed browsing and type ahead find are probably the two most useful features I have ever seen implemented in a browser, and I haven't seen good working implementations of those for IE.
Uhhh...actually it is. When he puts on his old super suit and goes on the secret mission.
I think what you meant to say is that the US is the richest country in the world. Which is not surprising considering things like our size, historical providence, AND political stance (which influences things like our foreign trade policy). Our political policies and general attitudes have brought a lot of money into this country, but does that make us the most successful? Is money the only important thing in the world? Are people living here happier then, say, people living in Germany just because they might be making more money?
So what you're saying is to get reliability out of a Windows server you need to be running a cluster. But to get reliability out of a linux server, you don't? I mean, if linux can deliver 4 nines with one machine, and Windows requires a cluster to deliver that kind of reliability, then one is more stable than the other, right? Anyway, this discussion isn't about stability, it is about security.
How do any of those present a better interface? How does taking GConf and dumping it to a large file result in a better interface? The problem is organization of a lot of information. Changing the storage method does not improve the interface. Besides, what you are saying doesn't even make sense. A treeview layout with all of the options doubly organized by application and purpose, with a search tool and context-sensitive help, is worse than a dump of all 500 or so options into a flat text file for you to scroll through with your text editor? Get real.
I understand and like the unix way of storing configuration information in text files, but GConf is not the huge betrayal your are making it out to be. I think it is a well thought out system that solves a problem. Everybody would like organization of preferences to be better, but blindly advocating the use of an unstructured flat file just because it is the "unix way" is dumb.
The way I remember it, GConf was created because it was not practical to store hundreds of little text configuration files. This was pre-ReiserFS. They tried the text files, but performance and storage efficiency was crap. So they moved to a database. Big deal...it is an open non-obfuscated format that anyone can read/create an editor for. If you can come up with a better interface for gconf-editor, go for it. But organizing hundreds of preferences in some logical fashion for convenient browsing is not an easy task.
And having actually used the Windows registry, GConf is nothing like it. GConf is for storing preferences. The Windows registry is for storing just about everything an app could need. And on top of that, it is a binary obfuscated format. If you think gconf-editor has a bad interface, regedit is a hundred times worse.
Can OO or StarOffice flawlessly open 100% of word documents?
No. Obfuscation of the office document formats has made this impossible. Staroffice can't do it. Neither can WordPerfect or even Microsoft Office (yes, it mangles its own documents sometimes). However, if you export to rtf first, all of these programs will open it flawlessly. I hardly consider a few hiccups here and there as criteria for "not being ready." There is a transition barrier, yes, but Linux itself *is* capable of both being on the desktop and replacing a number of Windows installations on the desktop.
Uhhh, try your distributions install cd. Since you are running Debian, I gather you are comfortable with compiling your own software. However, with Mandrake or Suse, I can guarantee you will never have to do that. When new software is released, you will have to wait for your distribution to package it, but you will be able to install the latest version without compiling. This really isn't any different in the Windows world. You can't install Office 2003 until, *gasp*, it is made available. The difference on linux is that the source is made available a touch sooner than distribution specific binaries. Since the source isn't even available for most Windows software, I don't consider this a bad thing.
Compile. Binary. Server. There goes 95% of users.
Binary. Packages. There go the rest.
This makes no sense. If you want something on your computer, you have to install the software. So click the little Openoffice.org button during installation and poof, it is on your computer. No compiles, none of the hassle you seem to be implying. On Windows you have to pop in the cd and click setup.exe, so how is this any different?
Your issue with off the shelf software and hardware availability is understandable, but
a) It is something that is out of the control of the open source community for the most part. Vendors have to decide it is profitable to sell commercial software on linux, and like I said earlier, I don't think this will ever happen.
b) Nobody said a switch from Windows to linux would be painless. It doesn't matter how much usability on linux improves, there will always be a transition period when you switch your os. Once your dad realizes he no longer has to buy his bridge game, that it and a lot of the rest of his software is just plain free, I'm sure he will perfectly happy with the concept. He won't understand it at first, but that is to be expected.
Is the current ease-of-ownership remotely near that of Windows for the casual or ignorant user? Hell no.
Well, I am certainly not an ignorant user. I just spent the last week wrestling with WinXP, trying to get it to install on a new computer with a SATA drive. Funny how I can just pop in a Gentoo livecd and have it work, but I have to rebuild the fucking iso to get the Windows setup program to even start! Once it is installed, then I have to run around screwing with group policies and such to make the desktop usable for all of the people who will use it. The new XP control panel, theme, and start menu are terrible. Whoops, media player doesn't work. Let's see "internal application error", that sure is helpful. Google...oh, I just have reregister the vbscript.dll and tweak some registry entries...doesn't work. Now what? Finally, sacrifice a goat and it works. I'm sorry, some things about Windows are nice, but it not a model operating system for usability, especially when something doesn't work out of the box and you have to fix it.
Get real! Why do people still say this crap? With a modern linux distribution you do not *have* to compile anything ever. You want a server, install the binary server packages. You want a desktop, install the binary desktop packages. Now you certainly *can* compile things, which allows for more flexibility if you want it, but you don't have to. If you don't want to compile things, you have to wait for the latest binary packages to be made available, just like any other os (except usually not for free).
You can't buy linux software in stores because, well, you can't really sell something that is not meant to be a retail product. And yes, you do have to run linux software on linux. It is as unreasonable to expect Windows software to run on linux as it is to expect Windows software to run on a Mac. Commercial vendors may start writing software for linux, but that is up to the vendors. Personally, I don't think it will ever happen to a large extent because free software equivalents are usually available for most of the silly things that commercial vendors try to sell you.
Hardware support is also quite good, and a large portion of off the shelf hardware will work out of the box. This isn't perfect, but it is certainly better than it used to be. And it is getting better all the time.
How about a city bus? Here in Boston, they're downright filthy,
So fix up the damn bus! That's what I hate about Boston. All of the public transportation is filthy, unmaintained, and slow. On the other coast (in Portland and even Seattle), buses are clean, efficient, and on schedule. The problem isn't the bus; it is MBTA.
I recently made the switch from Windows XP to Gentoo on my primary desktop.
Why in the world did you pick Gentoo as your first distro (or is it)? I love Gentoo and I use it on my own systems, but it is a high maintenance distro. It is good for tweakers, but not people who just want to get work done. If you are advanced enough to skip Mandrake, I recommend Debian. Quick to get up and running, good package management system, all of the goodies (nvidia drivers, 2.6 kernel,...) supported. It takes a bit more work to set up than, say Redhat, but you end up with a nice stable and secure system that will run without a hitch.