Sun's grid engine software Star Office 5.2 and Open Office 641c Updated YaST2 and much improved YaST2 console mode X 4.2 Alsa 0.9 One of the best firewall scripts anywhere
Fairly major changes in how admin settings are saved, with a lot of stuff moving out of/etc/rc.config and into a Red Hat-style/etc/sysconfig. It is still managed by YaST2, just stored in a different place.
It is polished and solid, and as always, stuffed with so much software, you could not absorb it all in several years. The upside is that almost everything you might want is in there already. SuSE may not be perfect, but they contribute huge chunks of code to the kernel, KDE, Alsa, Xfree, and NIS projects and that's good for everyone.
Some updates to KDE3 and other packages are already posted to their ftp site, so fire up the YaST Online Update right after the install to get the new goodies.
Flash, tons of whirly-gig animated gifs, 1MB images. All of these are bad design. If my browser pops up a window and says I need a flash/shockwave/whatever doo-dad plugin, I move on. What a waste. There is a reason the BLINK tag is dead. Why not focus on your message instead?
Access databases are the first thing I am killing at my office. We have 20 or so spread around different departments. I am converting them to MySQL on the backend with a PHP front end. Not only does it save license costs on the desktop, it runs the same in ANY browser on Linux or Windows AND it is much more stable.
Access databases suck big time in a multi-user situation. If one person loses a connection to the database (easy to do on a busy network), it can corrupt the whole database. Access works fine on a single user desktop which is what it was designed to do.
Anyway, I have about 5 converted so far and performance is better, stability is better, and I am inching my way toward a non-MS environment.
As far as Gobe, I think they have a great idea eliminating the separate file types and I am looking forward to the Linux release. Whether or not XML might be a better format than their own is another matter.
I did download and install it after beating my head against the wall of Red Hat support. My issue is not so much that I could not work around the problem, but why on earth doesn't someone at Red Hat figure out that CUPS is where everyone is going.
I mean, even Apple announced they were going to standardize on CUPS. Guess what. If Red Hat did the same, (SuSE and Mandrake are basically there already), we would have a de-facto Linux printing standard which is sorely needed. Printing is still a big ugly wart on the nose of Linux.
I stopped using Red Hat circa 7.1 because of their very broken print system. I checked the CHANGELOG and found no reference to CUPS. Why the hell don't they start including CUPS like every other major distro? It is the best print system out there for *nix IMHO.
Oh well, life is good with SuSE so that's where I'll stay.
I had all my production servers, my home server, and my laptop patched within 30 minutes of reading about this PHP problem. That's the big difference between open source and closed source security. I don't have to wait six months for Microsoft to get around to fixing it (usually they get it right on the second or third patch).
I agree, and possibly a bigger slice of the desktop market as well.
The Itanic smells a lot like IBMs ill fated move to the Microchannel bus. On the other hand, if Itanic delivers on the promise of vastly superior performance (doubtful) AND if they make it easy to post I32 programs, then it will have a chance.
It seems likely that Intel will back track and create a hybid 32-64 processor like AMD.
"I'm sure that people here will write that "don't buy it since it support non standard audio/video format" - to them I'm saying that when 90% of the people have those players - webmasters won't give a crap about others..."
And to you I say if you continue to support that crappy proprietary format, webmasters will continue not to give a crap. Sorry, if the web site won't post stuff in standard formats, I don't care to view it.
There is no simple, standard way to configure complex things. A nice GUI works fine if all you want to do is something simple, but when things get hard, you have to dig into the guts and really understand what is happening.
Now, using a standard syntax may hold some promise of making configuration a little easier, but the hard things will always be hard. No GUI will ever change that.
Also, text files are easier to manage remotely. Just give be ssh and vi and get out of my way:)
And next week, when the next batch of critical security flaws is revealed, follow the Microsoft DIR cycle...
1. Download the patch.
2. Install the patch.
3. Reboot.
Plan to do this every week on all your critical servers, work machines and home PCs. Just do this every week forever, or as long as you run a Microsoft OS and be done with it.
SuSE has been tracking the LSB for a couple of releases now. In fact, all of their boot scripts moved to the LSB defined locations in 7.3. As far as I can tell, SuSE comes the closest to LSB compliance today.
Red Hat has a long way to go.
Mandrake not only has problems with LSB, but mangles core packages like Apache.
I e-mailed Xybernaut about a month ago when I first ran across this. Never got a reply.
I was searching for a replacement for my Visor Prism which was running short on power for the things I wanted to do.
I considered a wearable, ready-made or building one, and a Linux based Sharp Zaurus. Well, the pricing was too high for me for any of the ready made models and even to build one, mostly due to the cost of a good head mounted display.
If your main goal is to centrally manage a network, I think you will find LDAP still a little undercooked.
I did a lot of research on LDAP thinking it was going to make directory management of a Linux network easier. It offers better security than NIS, and can scale a little better, but I don't think it can manage netgroups yet, which is a big deal if you use NFS a lot. For now, I think NIS is the best open source solution for Linux. NIS+ server code for Linux doesn't exist yet, but the client code does, although I haven't tested it.
As you found out, building the directory only solves one part of the management problem. You also have to have the client piece integrated for authentication (PAM) and in the C library for applications to use it for lookups. Again, I'd stick with NIS for now.
I have purchased several Loki games over this year, but Descent 3 is the best! I am on my third run through (with higher difficulty). It is fast, the music is great, and the plot is fun. Nothing says FU like a black shark missile:)
I can share quite a bit about this, since I have started and run two subchapter S corporations for exactly this purpose.
I started my first one in Texas in 1993, operated it until 1996 and sold it to one of my employees. Then, I moved to Michigan and started another on in 1997.
When I started the one in Texas, I didn't know what the hell I was doing so I paid a lawyer to do all the filing for my corp, fed tax id, state forms, etc. Net cost $900.
In Michigan, I generally knew what to do, but found it easier to pay an Internet company to do it for me, www.bizfilings.com. Net cost $319.
If you do decide to incorporate, go with an S-corp, it will save you a lot in tax dollars, but also do lots of research on your state laws. Texas has no state income tax, Michigan does. I have to file 25 or more reports each year:
federal monthly tax deposits
quarterly FICA reports
quarterly state tax deposits
quarterly state unemployment taxes
federal unemployment return
state income tax return
federal income tax return
other miscellanea
It can be overwhelming if you are not prepared. I do all my own returns except for the annual returns which are complicated enough to bring in my accoutant. I also buy general liability and workers comp insurance which runs about $700 a year. The only reason it's so low is I'm only insuring myself. In Texas, I had 6 employees, but now I'm a lone gun. A lot less stressful that way since I only have to keep myself employed.
Now, I don't want to poo-poo the idea, because for me, the benefits far outweigh the extra gruntwork. I have a lot of flexibility in my hours and the kind of work I choose to do. I answer only to my customers and if they piss me off, I can move on more easily. I would rather deal with the hassles of my own biz than the hassles of corporate life. But that's me. I also didn't have the guts or experience to even try something like this until I had about 8 years of experience in the industry. (I started life as a mainframe COBOL programmer for EDS back in the day).
So, it's not easy, but if you can pull it off, the rewards are oh so schweeet. Good Luck!
The 128-bit keys are only for US and Canada versions, dickweed. The SANS Institute considers their implementation of DESX still breakable by brute force.
For the past two years, I've been using it in several distributions, manually applying the kernel patches and compiling the necessary programs (utils). But with SuSE (>7.2), kernel encryption is built in which has saved me a load of time compiling it into the kernel.
SuSE uses twofish as the encryption algorithm which is good enough for me. I would prefer to use serpent, but not enough to recompile everything. Both twofish and serpent were finalists in the U.S. Federal AES competition, both losing to rijndeal. Of course, W2K/XP use weak 56-bit DES in their EFS and have administrator back doors, so it barely qualifies as encryption.
If you want fast, reliable, and easy to use enrypted file systems, choose SuSE!
I've run almost 10 different distros (counting the BSDs) and I always come back to SuSE. With the crypto now in the kernels by default and the firehose of apps, SuSE kicks it mack daddy fresh.
I hope they can pull out of the general slump and get profitable again or we'll all be running RedHat XP.
I have been heavily into mp3 for the last 4 years. I have a couple gig of files and just last weekend ripped my first.ogg. I could not tell a difference between ogg and mp3 sound quality. There are already several software players that support ogg like freeamp and xmms. There are two things missing that will hold ogg back:
1. Lack of portable hardware players. All the players on the market today support mp3 and wma, but none play ogg. This is a problem.
2. AFAIK, ripping to ogg is a 2 step process, save the track as a wav, then encode to ogg. This is 5 times slower than modern CD to mp3 rippers. And with my massive mp3s sitting there, I'd like to have a program that could convert from mp3 to ogg. Maybe there is a way to convert mp3 to wav to ogg in a bash script. I really haven't researched it.
One thing is certain, I'll never use the wma format.
Mandrake 8 is installing a broke-dick version of Apache. They apparently have decided to include patches that were rejected by the Apache group. They also broke httpd.conf into multiple config files and use non-standard apache modules. If you don't care about a web server, Mandrake might work fine for you, but don't expect to do any web development and have it work right on a non-gang-raped, real version of Apache.
This comment makes many good points. Also, the link timothy provided in the original post was not about the U.S. Federal Income Tax, but about opposition to the Estate Tax. As a small business person making about $120k/year, I can tell you that I DO WANT a tax cut. Do you know what a surplus is, timothy? It means the government taxed the people more than it needed to operate. As much as I support the space program, I don't support projects that can't be completed on budget for whatever reason. You have to have priorities and limits.
And I don't understand the logic of the Estate tax either. Why should the government tax wealth that was already taxed as it was earned, and taxed again as it is spent. We are already double taxed and the Estate tax is a third tax.
Comrade timothy is literally out in left field with this post. I am disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
SuSE 8.0 also includes:
/etc/rc.config and into a Red Hat-style /etc/sysconfig. It is still managed by YaST2, just stored in a different place.
Sun's grid engine software
Star Office 5.2 and Open Office 641c
Updated YaST2 and much improved YaST2 console mode
X 4.2
Alsa 0.9
One of the best firewall scripts anywhere
Fairly major changes in how admin settings are saved, with a lot of stuff moving out of
It is polished and solid, and as always, stuffed with so much software, you could not absorb it all in several years. The upside is that almost everything you might want is in there already. SuSE may not be perfect, but they contribute huge chunks of code to the kernel, KDE, Alsa, Xfree, and NIS projects and that's good for everyone.
Some updates to KDE3 and other packages are already posted to their ftp site, so fire up the YaST Online Update right after the install to get the new goodies.
Flash, tons of whirly-gig animated gifs, 1MB images. All of these are bad design. If my browser pops up a window and says I need a flash/shockwave/whatever doo-dad plugin, I move on. What a waste. There is a reason the BLINK tag is dead. Why not focus on your message instead?
Amen, brutha.
Although, I would make it Mutt/Procmail/Fetchmail/Postfix to complete the food chain.
Access databases are the first thing I am killing at my office. We have 20 or so spread around different departments. I am converting them to MySQL on the backend with a PHP front end. Not only does it save license costs on the desktop, it runs the same in ANY browser on Linux or Windows AND it is much more stable.
Access databases suck big time in a multi-user situation. If one person loses a connection to the database (easy to do on a busy network), it can corrupt the whole database. Access works fine on a single user desktop which is what it was designed to do.
Anyway, I have about 5 converted so far and performance is better, stability is better, and I am inching my way toward a non-MS environment.
As far as Gobe, I think they have a great idea eliminating the separate file types and I am looking forward to the Linux release. Whether or not XML might be a better format than their own is another matter.
I did download and install it after beating my head against the wall of Red Hat support. My issue is not so much that I could not work around the problem, but why on earth doesn't someone at Red Hat figure out that CUPS is where everyone is going.
I mean, even Apple announced they were going to standardize on CUPS. Guess what. If Red Hat did the same, (SuSE and Mandrake are basically there already), we would have a de-facto Linux printing standard which is sorely needed. Printing is still a big ugly wart on the nose of Linux.
I stopped using Red Hat circa 7.1 because of their very broken print system. I checked the CHANGELOG and found no reference to CUPS. Why the hell don't they start including CUPS like every other major distro? It is the best print system out there for *nix IMHO.
Oh well, life is good with SuSE so that's where I'll stay.
I had all my production servers, my home server, and my laptop patched within 30 minutes of reading about this PHP problem. That's the big difference between open source and closed source security. I don't have to wait six months for Microsoft to get around to fixing it (usually they get it right on the second or third patch).
Eat that, Microsoft loversI agree, and possibly a bigger slice of the desktop market as well.
The Itanic smells a lot like IBMs ill fated move to the Microchannel bus. On the other hand, if Itanic delivers on the promise of vastly superior performance (doubtful) AND if they make it easy to post I32 programs, then it will have a chance.
It seems likely that Intel will back track and create a hybid 32-64 processor like AMD.
"I'm sure that people here will write that "don't buy it since it support non standard audio/video format" - to them I'm saying that when 90% of the people have those players - webmasters won't give a crap about others..."
And to you I say if you continue to support that crappy proprietary format, webmasters will continue not to give a crap. Sorry, if the web site won't post stuff in standard formats, I don't care to view it.
There is no simple, standard way to configure complex things. A nice GUI works fine if all you want to do is something simple, but when things get hard, you have to dig into the guts and really understand what is happening.
:)
Now, using a standard syntax may hold some promise of making configuration a little easier, but the hard things will always be hard. No GUI will ever change that.
Also, text files are easier to manage remotely. Just give be ssh and vi and get out of my way
And next week, when the next batch of critical security flaws is revealed, follow the Microsoft DIR cycle...
1. Download the patch.
2. Install the patch.
3. Reboot.
Plan to do this every week on all your critical servers, work machines and home PCs. Just do this every week forever, or as long as you run a Microsoft OS and be done with it.
tiny reliable components are the basic philosophy of Unix.
Red Hat has given up on the desktop.
That may be smart business, and it may be a lost cause. It is certainly the reason Red Hat is just an average desktop among Linux distributions.
SuSE is better, Mandrake is better, the new desktop focused Lycoris and Elx are better.
I like what Red Hat has done for Linux, and if they want to stay in the server space, I wish them luck.
Someone else will fight on the desktop and I'll be fighting with them.
SuSE has been tracking the LSB for a couple of releases now. In fact, all of their boot scripts moved to the LSB defined locations in 7.3. As far as I can tell, SuSE comes the closest to LSB compliance today.
Red Hat has a long way to go.
Mandrake not only has problems with LSB, but mangles core packages like Apache.
I e-mailed Xybernaut about a month ago when I first ran across this. Never got a reply.
I was searching for a replacement for my Visor Prism which was running short on power for the things I wanted to do.
I considered a wearable, ready-made or building one, and a Linux based Sharp Zaurus. Well, the pricing was too high for me for any of the ready made models and even to build one, mostly due to the cost of a good head mounted display.
So, now I am waiting for new Zaurus.
What are you trying to do with an LDAP directory?
If your main goal is to centrally manage a network, I think you will find LDAP still a little undercooked.
I did a lot of research on LDAP thinking it was going to make directory management of a Linux network easier. It offers better security than NIS, and can scale a little better, but I don't think it can manage netgroups yet, which is a big deal if you use NFS a lot. For now, I think NIS is the best open source solution for Linux. NIS+ server code for Linux doesn't exist yet, but the client code does, although I haven't tested it.
As you found out, building the directory only solves one part of the management problem. You also have to have the client piece integrated for authentication (PAM) and in the C library for applications to use it for lookups. Again, I'd stick with NIS for now.
I have purchased several Loki games over this year, but Descent 3 is the best! I am on my third run through (with higher difficulty). It is fast, the music is great, and the plot is fun. Nothing says FU like a black shark missile :)
I can share quite a bit about this, since I have started and run two subchapter S corporations for exactly this purpose.
I started my first one in Texas in 1993, operated it until 1996 and sold it to one of my employees. Then, I moved to Michigan and started another on in 1997.
When I started the one in Texas, I didn't know what the hell I was doing so I paid a lawyer to do all the filing for my corp, fed tax id, state forms, etc. Net cost $900.
In Michigan, I generally knew what to do, but found it easier to pay an Internet company to do it for me, www.bizfilings.com. Net cost $319.
If you do decide to incorporate, go with an S-corp, it will save you a lot in tax dollars, but also do lots of research on your state laws. Texas has no state income tax, Michigan does. I have to file 25 or more reports each year:
It can be overwhelming if you are not prepared. I do all my own returns except for the annual returns which are complicated enough to bring in my accoutant. I also buy general liability and workers comp insurance which runs about $700 a year. The only reason it's so low is I'm only insuring myself. In Texas, I had 6 employees, but now I'm a lone gun. A lot less stressful that way since I only have to keep myself employed.
Now, I don't want to poo-poo the idea, because for me, the benefits far outweigh the extra gruntwork. I have a lot of flexibility in my hours and the kind of work I choose to do. I answer only to my customers and if they piss me off, I can move on more easily. I would rather deal with the hassles of my own biz than the hassles of corporate life. But that's me. I also didn't have the guts or experience to even try something like this until I had about 8 years of experience in the industry. (I started life as a mainframe COBOL programmer for EDS back in the day).
So, it's not easy, but if you can pull it off, the rewards are oh so schweeet. Good Luck!
The 128-bit keys are only for US and Canada versions, dickweed. The SANS Institute considers their implementation of DESX still breakable by brute force.
http://www.sans.org/infosecFAQ/win2000/w2k_efs.htm
Do you consider that backdoor a must-have for your personal data? I guess if you don't really want to keep you data secure, it's a must-have.
Why are Windows users sheep?
For the past two years, I've been using it in several distributions, manually applying the kernel patches and compiling the necessary programs (utils). But with SuSE (>7.2), kernel encryption is built in which has saved me a load of time compiling it into the kernel.
SuSE uses twofish as the encryption algorithm which is good enough for me. I would prefer to use serpent, but not enough to recompile everything. Both twofish and serpent were finalists in the U.S. Federal AES competition, both losing to rijndeal. Of course, W2K/XP use weak 56-bit DES in their EFS and have administrator back doors, so it barely qualifies as encryption.
If you want fast, reliable, and easy to use enrypted file systems, choose SuSE!
I've run almost 10 different distros (counting the BSDs) and I always come back to SuSE. With the crypto now in the kernels by default and the firehose of apps, SuSE kicks it mack daddy fresh.
I hope they can pull out of the general slump and get profitable again or we'll all be running RedHat XP.
I have been heavily into mp3 for the last 4 years. I have a couple gig of files and just last weekend ripped my first .ogg. I could not tell a difference between ogg and mp3 sound quality. There are already several software players that support ogg like freeamp and xmms. There are two things missing that will hold ogg back:
1. Lack of portable hardware players. All the players on the market today support mp3 and wma, but none play ogg. This is a problem.
2. AFAIK, ripping to ogg is a 2 step process, save the track as a wav, then encode to ogg. This is 5 times slower than modern CD to mp3 rippers. And with my massive mp3s sitting there, I'd like to have a program that could convert from mp3 to ogg. Maybe there is a way to convert mp3 to wav to ogg in a bash script. I really haven't researched it.
One thing is certain, I'll never use the wma format.
Mandrake 8 is installing a broke-dick version of Apache. They apparently have decided to include patches that were rejected by the Apache group. They also broke httpd.conf into multiple config files and use non-standard apache modules. If you don't care about a web server, Mandrake might work fine for you, but don't expect to do any web development and have it work right on a non-gang-raped, real version of Apache.
And I don't understand the logic of the Estate tax either. Why should the government tax wealth that was already taxed as it was earned, and taxed again as it is spent. We are already double taxed and the Estate tax is a third tax. Comrade timothy is literally out in left field with this post. I am disappointed.
The most important thing is that the Natalie Portman threads are safe. All things Natalie are sacred beyond price.