This isn't a Linux system, as has already been noted.
And operating systems are not named after their kernels (or FreeBSD would have be called "GENERIC":-)
Operating systems are properly named by whoever makes them. If Caldera wishes to call theirs "Open UNIX 8", then that is their right. If RMS wants something called "GNU/Linux", then he needs to go create one.
Not only is it legal, it's moral and ethical as well! If [insert linux-friendly company here] did the exact same thing we would be cheering. Discounts on bundles is not legal, it's commonplace!
The only reason people are bitching is because of the word "Microsoft". If there was an article about Microsoft giving their employee pay raises we would all be in an uproar about their keeping talent out of the job market.
Re:Don't Like It That Way? Don't Buy It That Way?
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$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2
You hit the nail on the head. We are like whiny children who pout when our every whim isn't instantly fulfilled.
It's not about liberty, morality or ethics, it's about instant gratification. To hell with Microsoft's freedom so long as I get my way.
What was the problem with Microsoft bundling IE with Windows and offering volume discounts to OEMs? Because they had a monopoly on certain classes of software. What they did was perfectly legal, ethical and moral if performed by any smaller company.
But Microsoft does not have a monopoly on game consoles.
Having actually built a Linux system from scratch, I can say without hesitation that the typical Linux distribution is emphatically NOT the GNU System.
The three biggest components of the Linux OS (and I use the acronym "OS" loosely) from GNU are the build-tool chain, the libc, and the file/text utilities. I cannot consider the presence and use of the GNU compiler to constitute renaming the OS. Otherwise we would have to do around talking about "Mac GNU/OSX" and "GNU/FreeBSD". That's ridiculous.
The file/text utilities might make a case for the operating environment to be called GNU if the majority of low level utilities in LinuxOS were from GNU. But they're not. The Linux operating environment derives from GNU, BSD, Linux-specific projects, and a multitude of independent projects.
Finally, glibc. Funny, but glibc 2.0 and above was written specifically *for* Linux. Perhaps it should be called "Linux/glibc"?
To quote from Ulrich Drepper, primary author of glibc: "I consider none of the code I contributed to glibc (which is quite a lot) to be as part of the GNU project".
If Linus Torvalds and Company had done what RMS said they did, which was to take an existing GNU System and merely supply the missing kernel, then RMS would be somewhat justified in insisting that it be called "GNU/Linux". But that is NOT what transpired almost ten years ago. Instead, Linus decided to write his own operating system because 386BSD was in court and GNU was far from finished. So he wrote a kernel, a few other components and then a million of his friends stepped in and either wrote additional components or grabbed existing ones from various locations. One of those locations was GNU, but it was not the only source.
In fact, much of GNU was written to conform to Linux, and not the other way around! It was Linux that make a home for GNU, and now the house guest has the temerity to rename the estate!
It doesn't matter if software is property or not. What does matter is that people are free to enter into agreements with one another.
Utilitarian analogy: User Alice does not have the Fubar++ software. Developer Bob does, and he is the only one who does. Total utility == 100. Bob sells a copy of Fubar++ to Alice for the sum of $50 and the promise that the source code will not be disclosed. Total utility == (200 - 50). Net gain for the world.
Anarcho/capitalist analogy: Alice has no rights with regards to Bob's copy of Fubar++ on his physical CD. Bob sells the CD to Alice under the terms of the Standard Vinge/Schulman Copyholder Contract, which forbids unauthorized distribution of other contractees works.
Realistic analogy: Alice goes to the store to buys a copy of Bob's software, fully cognizant of the the existance of a defacto and implicit contract known as Copyright. If she agrees with those defacto terms of use, she will buy the software. If she disagrees, she will not.
I don't like copyright law. It's a statist solution to a problem best left to a free society to solve using voluntary means. However, that does not nullify the fact that a creator has the right to control the distribution of his or her works. Copyright certainly makes it easier for the creator, but the lack of copyright won't make control impossible or even difficult.
The User has the right to enter into a private agreement with the developer with regards to the terms with which the user can use the software in exchange for receiving the software. In other words, the right of contract.
Text-only operating system? What the hell are you talking about?
About a year ago friend came over and saw my computer monitor. It was running KDE with the Acqua theme, and all the bells and whistles running. He said "I see you decided to stop using that text-only Linux stuff." "Yep", I replied, "I'm running FreeBSD now..."
FreeBSD isn't any more or less text-oriented than Linux. You have your X11R6 and the very same GUI programs you are used to. It has xdm, gdm, kdm and all the other *dms do you never have to see a text console.
If you're frightened of seeing raw text unsurrounded by themed GUI borders, then by all means stay away from FreeBSD. But also stay away from Linux for the same reason. Eventually you're going to have to delve into the inner working of the operating system and configure something unanticipated by YaST or DrakConf.
Bob Young once compared proprietary software to a car with its hood welded shut. If you want every automobile function to be accessible through the dashboard, why then, you might as well have one of the hood-welded cars.
Hmmm, I don't know about porting to qt-3.x, but I definitely remember the hassles of porting KDE from qt-1.4x to qt-2.x. Many major KDE applications were simply unavailable for KDE-2.0 for a very long time.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think an API should be frozen in stone. But a lot of attention needs to be made to the existing source and binaries that were made for last months API.
The community he is referring to does not consist solely of the Linux and GNU communities. He is referring to the Open Source community at large. That community includes XFree86 developers, BSD developers, Apache developers, Perl and Python developers, etc., etc. The GPL is accepted by the community as a valid and useful standard for copyleft-style licenses. But it is not universally accepted as a Good Thing(tm). You may disagree, but you are not the community, only a very small part of it.
SO people who want to either developer QT or KDE applications might want to download QT 3 snapshot and play with it.
Sorry, I don't play that game. That's what they do in the closed source world. Always chasing after the latest software. Don't get me wrong, I will be using KDE 3.0. But I won't be doing any KDE development. I tired of chasing after Qt.
How many X11 programs written ten years ago compile perfectly fine today? How many Motif programs written ten years ago compile perfectly fine today? Will today's Qt-2.3.1 program compile with next year's Qt? Hah!
I like Qt. It's well organized and sensible. But this is going to be release 3.0. Not 0.3.0. You would think Trolltech would have the API hammered out by now. Give us a break and freeze the damn interface and let us catch up!
There was no such thing as "deregulation" of the California power industry. It was a huge conspiracy against the English language, brought to you by the same folks who called NAFTA a "free trade" agreement.
You would be correct, except for one small thing...
The local telco's are all government mandated monopolies.
In my neck of the woods, Pacific Bell is the only company legally allowed to operate local telephone service. Thus, they own the lines. They are also in the DSL business, selling service at half of what anyone else can sell it for. You want to offer DSL you have to pay Pacific Bell, your competitor, for the priviledge.
Connecting through your cable company is an alternataive, but again, the same situation applies. You cable company is also a government mandated monopoly.
Telephone and cable lines are scarce commodities. Unfortunately they have been parcelled out according to political whim instead of through market forces.
If the newbie is willing to learn, then by all means, Slackware is the only way to go! But if the newbie merely wants to see what all this Linux hullabaloo is about, then Mandrake or SuSE would be more appropriate.
Slackware is a great learning distro because it's bare-bones. No cruft to get in the way. I know too many people who know Redhat inside and out, yet would be lost in twenty seconds with Debian. And vice versa.
(Of course, if the newbie wants to learn *unix* as opposed to just linux, then FreeBSD might be a good choice as well)
The Redhat==Microsoft analogy is very apt. Remove your Microsoft prejudices and look at the OS world from the eyes of everyday Joe. Joe wants to run Windows because all of his friends are running Windows, the university extension teaches Windows classes, and the software down at Fry's is all for Windows. Now he wants to use Linux. What does he choose? The distro that everyone else is using, and the one that all of the HOWTO sites are geared towards.
I had used friend's computers in high school to play games on, but it was the IBM PC in college that I first used as a serious computer.
Rememberances...
IBM PC: Rock solid, reliable, trustworthy.
Compaq: A rock solid, reliable and mostly trustworthy suitcase.
AT&T PC: An 8086 instead of an 8088.
Other clones: cheap knockoffs.
Macintosh: You needed a Lisa if you wanted to do any development. And what's this? You had to ask the computer for permission to eject the floppy? It was great if you just wanted to use the computer as a tool, instead of as an end-product.
Amiga: More great ideas per cubic inch than any other personal computer before or since. But it never caught the attention of the general public. Video artists and programmers still remember it fondly.
Operating systems...
The PC came with four: PC-DOS, UCSD P-System, Xenix and CP/M. I really wish CP/M would have been the standard. But with the small memory of the entry line PC, only PC-DOS could cut it. UCSD P-System wasn't really an operating system, but a glorified IDE. And Xenix tried to do too much in too small of memory (and was way overpriced).
DR-DOS: MSDOS was a joke, PCDOS was okay, but pricey. DR-DOS was affordable, reliable and did a heck of a lot of stuff that other DOS's couldn't do.
GeoWorks: An operating shell, not an OS. Just like Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 95, 98 and ME. At one time GeoWorks was preinstalled on a few computers. And it was better than Windows. But there was no SDK.
OS/2: The best user interface before or since. But it was TOO compatible with Windows, so no one bothered to write OS/2 applications.
Freenix: Walnut Creek offered up CD's on a wide variety of topics. 44BSD-Lite, 386BSD, FreeBSD and Slackware Linux. Eventually I tried Slackware 96.
The big trends...
Compatibility: Hardware compatibility aided the proliferation of clones. But it also meant that we would be stuck with an archaic architecture to this day. Ditto for software compatibility.
Code Bloat: Word processors used to fit on a 360K floppy disk. Now you can barely fit them on a 360M hard drive.
Open Source: It was always there. But it was never mainstream. The average user will gain the benefits of Open Source, but only the developer and the ideologue will really ever care that the source code is available.
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No. Instead (as I understand it), it is a Linux distribution with a different kernel and infrastructure.
Sure, there are GNU packages installed. So what? Ditto for every other UNIX out there.
This isn't a Linux system, as has already been noted.
:-)
And operating systems are not named after their kernels (or FreeBSD would have be called "GENERIC"
Operating systems are properly named by whoever makes them. If Caldera wishes to call theirs "Open UNIX 8", then that is their right. If RMS wants something called "GNU/Linux", then he needs to go create one.
Not only is it legal, it's moral and ethical as well! If [insert linux-friendly company here] did the exact same thing we would be cheering. Discounts on bundles is not legal, it's commonplace!
The only reason people are bitching is because of the word "Microsoft". If there was an article about Microsoft giving their employee pay raises we would all be in an uproar about their keeping talent out of the job market.
You hit the nail on the head. We are like whiny children who pout when our every whim isn't instantly fulfilled.
It's not about liberty, morality or ethics, it's about instant gratification. To hell with Microsoft's freedom so long as I get my way.
I fail to understand the problem here.
What was the problem with Microsoft bundling IE with Windows and offering volume discounts to OEMs? Because they had a monopoly on certain classes of software. What they did was perfectly legal, ethical and moral if performed by any smaller company.
But Microsoft does not have a monopoly on game consoles.
Having actually built a Linux system from scratch, I can say without hesitation that the typical Linux distribution is emphatically NOT the GNU System.
The three biggest components of the Linux OS (and I use the acronym "OS" loosely) from GNU are the build-tool chain, the libc, and the file/text utilities. I cannot consider the presence and use of the GNU compiler to constitute renaming the OS. Otherwise we would have to do around talking about "Mac GNU/OSX" and "GNU/FreeBSD". That's ridiculous.
The file/text utilities might make a case for the operating environment to be called GNU if the majority of low level utilities in LinuxOS were from GNU. But they're not. The Linux operating environment derives from GNU, BSD, Linux-specific projects, and a multitude of independent projects.
Finally, glibc. Funny, but glibc 2.0 and above was written specifically *for* Linux. Perhaps it should be called "Linux/glibc"?
To quote from Ulrich Drepper, primary author of glibc: "I consider none of the code I contributed to glibc (which is quite a lot) to be as part of the GNU project".
If Linus Torvalds and Company had done what RMS said they did, which was to take an existing GNU System and merely supply the missing kernel, then RMS would be somewhat justified in insisting that it be called "GNU/Linux". But that is NOT what transpired almost ten years ago. Instead, Linus decided to write his own operating system because 386BSD was in court and GNU was far from finished. So he wrote a kernel, a few other components and then a million of his friends stepped in and either wrote additional components or grabbed existing ones from various locations. One of those locations was GNU, but it was not the only source.
In fact, much of GNU was written to conform to Linux, and not the other way around! It was Linux that make a home for GNU, and now the house guest has the temerity to rename the estate!
It doesn't matter if software is property or not. What does matter is that people are free to enter into agreements with one another.
Utilitarian analogy: User Alice does not have the Fubar++ software. Developer Bob does, and he is the only one who does. Total utility == 100. Bob sells a copy of Fubar++ to Alice for the sum of $50 and the promise that the source code will not be disclosed. Total utility == (200 - 50). Net gain for the world.
Anarcho/capitalist analogy: Alice has no rights with regards to Bob's copy of Fubar++ on his physical CD. Bob sells the CD to Alice under the terms of the Standard Vinge/Schulman Copyholder Contract, which forbids unauthorized distribution of other contractees works.
Realistic analogy: Alice goes to the store to buys a copy of Bob's software, fully cognizant of the the existance of a defacto and implicit contract known as Copyright. If she agrees with those defacto terms of use, she will buy the software. If she disagrees, she will not.
I don't like copyright law. It's a statist solution to a problem best left to a free society to solve using voluntary means. However, that does not nullify the fact that a creator has the right to control the distribution of his or her works. Copyright certainly makes it easier for the creator, but the lack of copyright won't make control impossible or even difficult.
The User has the right to enter into a private agreement with the developer with regards to the terms with which the user can use the software in exchange for receiving the software. In other words, the right of contract.
Okay, the $64,000 question. Why waste my time getting up to speed with qt-3.0 when you know darn well qt-4.0 will be out in 12 to 18 months?
So, what about Eric Raymond's question he posed to you at LinuxToday today[sic]?
if you two could get a law passed making proprietary licenses illegal, would you do it?
Text-only operating system? What the hell are you talking about?
About a year ago friend came over and saw my computer monitor. It was running KDE with the Acqua theme, and all the bells and whistles running. He said "I see you decided to stop using that text-only Linux stuff." "Yep", I replied, "I'm running FreeBSD now..."
FreeBSD isn't any more or less text-oriented than Linux. You have your X11R6 and the very same GUI programs you are used to. It has xdm, gdm, kdm and all the other *dms do you never have to see a text console.
If you're frightened of seeing raw text unsurrounded by themed GUI borders, then by all means stay away from FreeBSD. But also stay away from Linux for the same reason. Eventually you're going to have to delve into the inner working of the operating system and configure something unanticipated by YaST or DrakConf.
Bob Young once compared proprietary software to a car with its hood welded shut. If you want every automobile function to be accessible through the dashboard, why then, you might as well have one of the hood-welded cars.
If you have to program to an ever-changing API, I pity you. I also pity the user.
Hmmm, I don't know about porting to qt-3.x, but I definitely remember the hassles of porting KDE from qt-1.4x to qt-2.x. Many major KDE applications were simply unavailable for KDE-2.0 for a very long time.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think an API should be frozen in stone. But a lot of attention needs to be made to the existing source and binaries that were made for last months API.
If you're programming to the Linux kernel API you are making a mistake. It would be much, much better to program to the stable POSIX API.
The community he is referring to does not consist solely of the Linux and GNU communities. He is referring to the Open Source community at large. That community includes XFree86 developers, BSD developers, Apache developers, Perl and Python developers, etc., etc. The GPL is accepted by the community as a valid and useful standard for copyleft-style licenses. But it is not universally accepted as a Good Thing(tm). You may disagree, but you are not the community, only a very small part of it.
SO people who want to either developer QT or KDE applications might want to download QT 3 snapshot and play with it.
Sorry, I don't play that game. That's what they do in the closed source world. Always chasing after the latest software. Don't get me wrong, I will be using KDE 3.0. But I won't be doing any KDE development. I tired of chasing after Qt.
How many X11 programs written ten years ago compile perfectly fine today? How many Motif programs written ten years ago compile perfectly fine today? Will today's Qt-2.3.1 program compile with next year's Qt? Hah!
I like Qt. It's well organized and sensible. But this is going to be release 3.0. Not 0.3.0. You would think Trolltech would have the API hammered out by now. Give us a break and freeze the damn interface and let us catch up!
There was no such thing as "deregulation" of the California power industry. It was a huge conspiracy against the English language, brought to you by the same folks who called NAFTA a "free trade" agreement.
You would be correct, except for one small thing...
The local telco's are all government mandated monopolies.
In my neck of the woods, Pacific Bell is the only company legally allowed to operate local telephone service. Thus, they own the lines. They are also in the DSL business, selling service at half of what anyone else can sell it for. You want to offer DSL you have to pay Pacific Bell, your competitor, for the priviledge.
Connecting through your cable company is an alternataive, but again, the same situation applies. You cable company is also a government mandated monopoly.
Telephone and cable lines are scarce commodities. Unfortunately they have been parcelled out according to political whim instead of through market forces.
As an added bonus, the KDE Menu is organized more logically than any distro I've seen
Huh? What's wrong with the menu that already ships with KDE? Why do distros always have to fiddle with stuff that isn't broken?
I have to agree. You might not stick with FreeBSD, but if you only try Linux, you're missing a whole other world out there called "unix".
If the newbie is willing to learn, then by all means, Slackware is the only way to go! But if the newbie merely wants to see what all this Linux hullabaloo is about, then Mandrake or SuSE would be more appropriate.
Slackware is a great learning distro because it's bare-bones. No cruft to get in the way. I know too many people who know Redhat inside and out, yet would be lost in twenty seconds with Debian. And vice versa.
(Of course, if the newbie wants to learn *unix* as opposed to just linux, then FreeBSD might be a good choice as well)
Slackware Ain't Dead!
:-)
Next thing you know, you'll be the troll posting "It doesn't take a Kreskin to know that Slackware is dying"
I'm thinking about Gentoo. It looks nice.
The Redhat==Microsoft analogy is very apt. Remove your Microsoft prejudices and look at the OS world from the eyes of everyday Joe. Joe wants to run Windows because all of his friends are running Windows, the university extension teaches Windows classes, and the software down at Fry's is all for Windows. Now he wants to use Linux. What does he choose? The distro that everyone else is using, and the one that all of the HOWTO sites are geared towards.
286? Hell, I ran it on an 8086! As near as I could figure out, the 80286 requirement was merely for extra Hz, because I never had any problems.
Without an SDK, Geoworks was destined to me nothing more than a fancy launcher with an office suite.
I had used friend's computers in high school to play games on, but it was the IBM PC in college that I first used as a serious computer.
Rememberances...
IBM PC: Rock solid, reliable, trustworthy.
Compaq: A rock solid, reliable and mostly trustworthy suitcase.
AT&T PC: An 8086 instead of an 8088.
Other clones: cheap knockoffs.
Macintosh: You needed a Lisa if you wanted to do any development. And what's this? You had to ask the computer for permission to eject the floppy? It was great if you just wanted to use the computer as a tool, instead of as an end-product.
Amiga: More great ideas per cubic inch than any other personal computer before or since. But it never caught the attention of the general public. Video artists and programmers still remember it fondly.
Operating systems...
The PC came with four: PC-DOS, UCSD P-System, Xenix and CP/M. I really wish CP/M would have been the standard. But with the small memory of the entry line PC, only PC-DOS could cut it. UCSD P-System wasn't really an operating system, but a glorified IDE. And Xenix tried to do too much in too small of memory (and was way overpriced).
DR-DOS: MSDOS was a joke, PCDOS was okay, but pricey. DR-DOS was affordable, reliable and did a heck of a lot of stuff that other DOS's couldn't do.
GeoWorks: An operating shell, not an OS. Just like Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 95, 98 and ME. At one time GeoWorks was preinstalled on a few computers. And it was better than Windows. But there was no SDK.
OS/2: The best user interface before or since. But it was TOO compatible with Windows, so no one bothered to write OS/2 applications.
Freenix: Walnut Creek offered up CD's on a wide variety of topics. 44BSD-Lite, 386BSD, FreeBSD and Slackware Linux. Eventually I tried Slackware 96.
The big trends...
Compatibility: Hardware compatibility aided the proliferation of clones. But it also meant that we would be stuck with an archaic architecture to this day. Ditto for software compatibility.
Code Bloat: Word processors used to fit on a 360K floppy disk. Now you can barely fit them on a 360M hard drive.
Open Source: It was always there. But it was never mainstream. The average user will gain the benefits of Open Source, but only the developer and the ideologue will really ever care that the source code is available.