Bingo! But even beyond this, Linux (or FreeBSD which is my favorite) provides a "smart" thin client for free. Sit in front of any workstation, login, and bang you're in you're own home environment. The only software on the PC is the base operating system.
The main user gets admin privledges, but the Administrator account is left alone unless it is needed.
Ditto for UNIX. If you don't need to be root, don't log in as root!
I also like the security of XP, so that power users can install software without having to be an administrator.
What makes you think UNIX is excluded from this capability? As a lowly user, I built and installed KDE on my Solaris workstation. How? It's called the home directory. Duh! Other possibilities abound to allow users to install their own software, limited by only your imagination.
The whole security root security architecture of the unix world is really screwed, especially when used on a desktop.
I haven't seen this "screwed" attribute you're talking of. Certainly it isn't the end-all of security administration, but it is a solid and robust foundation to build upon.
The basic problem I see with your perspective is that it conveniently overlooks one important factor. Who should be the administrator? From the UNIX perspective the answer is simple: who ever owns the machine has the ultimate responsibility to administer it. In the case of the corporate desktop, the corporate IT department should be the administrator. In the case of the home desktop, then it is the owner. In other words, if Fred bought and installed the system, then Fred is the sysadmin, like it or not.
If you own an automobile, then you are ultimately responsible for maintaining it. As the owner of an automobile it is your responsibility to change the oil on a regular basis. Ford or Chrysler won't do it for you. When it breaks down due to lack of maintenance you have no one to blame but yourself. Ditto for computer systems. Either you maintain the system yourself, or you find someone to do it for you.
This does NOT mean that UNIX is inappropriate for the home desktop. It just means that the home user must find someone else to maintain their system, or educate themselves a tiny bit. It's not hard to change the oil in an automobile. And it's not hard to log in as root to install software.
I'm not even running Linux, but FreeBSD, and I'm not having a problem at all with video playback. Except for Quicktime, I get smooth responsive playback of all other formats (that I've tried). Thanks primarily to MPlayer.
I'm not really sure what I'm missing other than games and viruses by using FreeBSD instead of Windows.
BTW, did you know that the USPS does not take taxpayer money? Not a cent.
Then why is it against the law to compete with them? If they're able to be run as business, then let them be run as a business and face some competition. If they're truly the best, then you have nothing to worry about. We don't even have to "break them up", just rescind the laws preventing private companies from offering first class mail service.
Head down to your local postoffice. If the office is old enough, you'll see two mail slots with brass labels. One label says "local" and the other says "out of town". Now get a flashlight and peer into those slots.
my concern is that rural areas would by stuck with only one greedy private company as their only means of communication
The facts are against your concerns. Telephone service is not a state run monopoly, yet local calls in rural areas are not significantly higher than local calls in urban areas. (at least in the rural areas I've called from.) Calling from a rural area to an urban area costs the same as from the same urban area to the same rural area. It may seem like more, but that's because most calls you make as a rural resident are long distance.
If UPS can deliver to every address in the US, why do you think a private first class mail company could not? Sure, it's not going to be profitable delivering to that lone household seventy miles from nowhere. But guess what? Odds are that lone household doesn't get mail service NOW, and has to pick up their mail at a distant postoffice box every week when they head in for groceries.
If we look at the last 100^H^H50 years of programming, we can predict what the next 100 years will bring:
Safer languages. Forget typesafe languages, we'll have typeless languages. And then the algorithms will be intensely abstracted as well. We'll have functional composition with a usable syntax. We'll create GUIs by overloading the + operator to handle components. And of course, automatic runtime code reuse will be an assumed feature of the language.
And of course, the past fifty years teaches us that it won't be free. The personal computer of 2100 will have 100 Zigs of RAM, with 1024 parallel SMB processors running at 100.33 Zigahertz, and a display with 128Zps framerate. But the languages of the future will suck up those resources faster than you can upgrade your box. And.NET2100 applications will still run like a dog.
And the college kids of 2100 will wonder how they ever managed to fit a Linux distro in a 5 DVD set, or how people ever managed to communicate over a 8Gbps connection.
Maybe they should go slap the glibc developers upside the head. And when they're done they should stop making themselves dependent upon a specific implementation of libc.
However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.
I wonder if he wants to ban passkeys as well, lest hotel concierges cement their power of hotel guests...
Come one Richard! Enter the real world! If it's your system you can do whatever you want. But sometimes, just sometimes, the user of the system is not the owner of the system, and has no legal, moral or ethical rights to its administration.
It must have a GUI interface for installing and configuring the system. I'm a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system.
I just installed Slackware 9.0 this afternoon. It has a text mode installer. It did not require any typing of any words beyond entering a root password. The only other keys uses were up-arrow, down-arrow, space and return. It doesn't friggin matter how lousy a typist she is, she doesn't need to know how to type!
I hear this complaint/request all the time, and it never ceases to amaze me that it's even a concern. Is she expecting to manually write partition geometries or something? Manually having to type in obtuse package names? Nothing of the sort!
p.s. I'm not claiming Slackware is appropriate for the clueless, or that manually typing in commands is never needed. But rejecting an installer out of hand because it uses a 80x25 text window instead of a 640x480 pixel window is silly.
p.p.s. I wonder how she writes her technical documents if she can't type. ViaVoice?
They're not the only ones. You see,.NET is a religion, just like Java was ten years ago. My company is the seventh largest in the world, but someone got religion, and now C# and.NET are all the rage, to the point that they're specing them for embedded devices. Yet just last year we were forbidden to use Java for anything. The training coordinator asked me if I knew of any experienced C# instructors. I've seen hiring reqs that specify five years experience in.NET.
It doesn't really matter how new or untested the technology is, Microsoft wants sheep to use it, so sheep do.
I'm a windows fan but one thing that *really* p*sses me off about the windwos world is your somehow just expected to *know* how to use it and if you don't you just get the standard issue to reinstall the software when you seek advice. Of course that would be great if it actually came with some documentation instead of shelling out yet more money for a video on how to use office and slim your thighs at the same time because only people whacked out on LSD use windows.
Re:Linux vs. Freebsd - Desktop?
on
FreeBSD 4.8 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It's the desktop, you won't be able to tell any difference just because of the kernel. There may be some difference, but they will be because of other things, like libc vs glibc, or the build optimizations you use, etc.
In my experience, I can't tell the difference on the *desktop* between FreeBSD and Slackware, with both built from scratch with the same CFLAGs.
What about those projects that are stable? Maybe the software is DONE and doesn't need constant tinkering with. Maybe the primary authors have more than one project they are working on, and switch off every six months. Or maybe the software has a release schedule greater than six months.
Your scheme would potentially eliminate Slackware, XFree86, TeX, and other stuff. The scheme might work for software that is categorized as "unstable", but otherwise it's a useless idea. But even then don't delete the project, just move it to an inactive state, so it's still there for people to get to.
How many embedded systems do you know that require symmetrical multiprocessing? Seriously now. I'm certain there's a few, but if there are any that require 64 CPU's I would be extremely surprised. I would be mildly surprised if there were more than a dozen that needed 8.
And why you're at it, maybe the USA that has your and my best interests at heart can just give us a lot of money so we don't have to go to work and can spend all our free time surfing slashdot. Maybe they should give us girlfriends too so we don't have to waste our time at the singles bar. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Tying yourself to a proprietary solution to run proprietary applications for a proprietary OS. Why dont' you just stick with Windows and be done with it?
This may sound sarcastic, but I mean it as a genuine question. You're choosing an OS based on the ability to run native Windows applications. So why not just run Windows and eliminate the middle man?
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo! But even beyond this, Linux (or FreeBSD which is my favorite) provides a "smart" thin client for free. Sit in front of any workstation, login, and bang you're in you're own home environment. The only software on the PC is the base operating system.
The main user gets admin privledges, but the Administrator account is left alone unless it is needed.
Ditto for UNIX. If you don't need to be root, don't log in as root!
I also like the security of XP, so that power users can install software without having to be an administrator.
What makes you think UNIX is excluded from this capability? As a lowly user, I built and installed KDE on my Solaris workstation. How? It's called the home directory. Duh! Other possibilities abound to allow users to install their own software, limited by only your imagination.
The whole security root security architecture of the unix world is really screwed, especially when used on a desktop.
I haven't seen this "screwed" attribute you're talking of. Certainly it isn't the end-all of security administration, but it is a solid and robust foundation to build upon.
The basic problem I see with your perspective is that it conveniently overlooks one important factor. Who should be the administrator? From the UNIX perspective the answer is simple: who ever owns the machine has the ultimate responsibility to administer it. In the case of the corporate desktop, the corporate IT department should be the administrator. In the case of the home desktop, then it is the owner. In other words, if Fred bought and installed the system, then Fred is the sysadmin, like it or not.
If you own an automobile, then you are ultimately responsible for maintaining it. As the owner of an automobile it is your responsibility to change the oil on a regular basis. Ford or Chrysler won't do it for you. When it breaks down due to lack of maintenance you have no one to blame but yourself. Ditto for computer systems. Either you maintain the system yourself, or you find someone to do it for you.
This does NOT mean that UNIX is inappropriate for the home desktop. It just means that the home user must find someone else to maintain their system, or educate themselves a tiny bit. It's not hard to change the oil in an automobile. And it's not hard to log in as root to install software.
I'm not even running Linux, but FreeBSD, and I'm not having a problem at all with video playback. Except for Quicktime, I get smooth responsive playback of all other formats (that I've tried). Thanks primarily to MPlayer.
I'm not really sure what I'm missing other than games and viruses by using FreeBSD instead of Windows.
BTW, did you know that the USPS does not take taxpayer money? Not a cent.
Then why is it against the law to compete with them? If they're able to be run as business, then let them be run as a business and face some competition. If they're truly the best, then you have nothing to worry about. We don't even have to "break them up", just rescind the laws preventing private companies from offering first class mail service.
EVEN IF ITS LOCAL!
Head down to your local postoffice. If the office is old enough, you'll see two mail slots with brass labels. One label says "local" and the other says "out of town". Now get a flashlight and peer into those slots.
Those both dump into the same bin!
my concern is that rural areas would by stuck with only one greedy private company as their only means of communication
The facts are against your concerns. Telephone service is not a state run monopoly, yet local calls in rural areas are not significantly higher than local calls in urban areas. (at least in the rural areas I've called from.) Calling from a rural area to an urban area costs the same as from the same urban area to the same rural area. It may seem like more, but that's because most calls you make as a rural resident are long distance.
If UPS can deliver to every address in the US, why do you think a private first class mail company could not? Sure, it's not going to be profitable delivering to that lone household seventy miles from nowhere. But guess what? Odds are that lone household doesn't get mail service NOW, and has to pick up their mail at a distant postoffice box every week when they head in for groceries.
what Java tried, and never quite achieved
.NET hasn't achieved it either. Same overblown hype different framework.
And of course,
If we look at the last 100^H^H50 years of programming, we can predict what the next 100 years will bring:
.NET2100 applications will still run like a dog.
Safer languages. Forget typesafe languages, we'll have typeless languages. And then the algorithms will be intensely abstracted as well. We'll have functional composition with a usable syntax. We'll create GUIs by overloading the + operator to handle components. And of course, automatic runtime code reuse will be an assumed feature of the language.
And of course, the past fifty years teaches us that it won't be free. The personal computer of 2100 will have 100 Zigs of RAM, with 1024 parallel SMB processors running at 100.33 Zigahertz, and a display with 128Zps framerate. But the languages of the future will suck up those resources faster than you can upgrade your box. And
And the college kids of 2100 will wonder how they ever managed to fit a Linux distro in a 5 DVD set, or how people ever managed to communicate over a 8Gbps connection.
It's because kids use IRC before they know how to talk.
Gee, I have OpenGL compiled in my FOSS Qt for X11...
Maybe they should go slap the glibc developers upside the head. And when they're done they should stop making themselves dependent upon a specific implementation of libc.
However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.
I wonder if he wants to ban passkeys as well, lest hotel concierges cement their power of hotel guests...
Come one Richard! Enter the real world! If it's your system you can do whatever you want. But sometimes, just sometimes, the user of the system is not the owner of the system, and has no legal, moral or ethical rights to its administration.
Yep, she's clueless. Consider:
It must have a GUI interface for installing and configuring the system. I'm a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system.
I just installed Slackware 9.0 this afternoon. It has a text mode installer. It did not require any typing of any words beyond entering a root password. The only other keys uses were up-arrow, down-arrow, space and return. It doesn't friggin matter how lousy a typist she is, she doesn't need to know how to type!
I hear this complaint/request all the time, and it never ceases to amaze me that it's even a concern. Is she expecting to manually write partition geometries or something? Manually having to type in obtuse package names? Nothing of the sort!
p.s. I'm not claiming Slackware is appropriate for the clueless, or that manually typing in commands is never needed. But rejecting an installer out of hand because it uses a 80x25 text window instead of a 640x480 pixel window is silly.
p.p.s. I wonder how she writes her technical documents if she can't type. ViaVoice?
They're not the only ones. You see, .NET is a religion, just like Java was ten years ago. My company is the seventh largest in the world, but someone got religion, and now C# and .NET are all the rage, to the point that they're specing them for embedded devices. Yet just last year we were forbidden to use Java for anything. The training coordinator asked me if I knew of any experienced C# instructors. I've seen hiring reqs that specify five years experience in .NET.
It doesn't really matter how new or untested the technology is, Microsoft wants sheep to use it, so sheep do.
I'm a windows fan but one thing that *really* p*sses me off about the windwos world is your somehow just expected to *know* how to use it and if you don't you just get the standard issue to reinstall the software when you seek advice. Of course that would be great if it actually came with some documentation instead of shelling out yet more money for a video on how to use office and slim your thighs at the same time because only people whacked out on LSD use windows.
It's the desktop, you won't be able to tell any difference just because of the kernel. There may be some difference, but they will be because of other things, like libc vs glibc, or the build optimizations you use, etc.
In my experience, I can't tell the difference on the *desktop* between FreeBSD and Slackware, with both built from scratch with the same CFLAGs.
What about those projects that are stable? Maybe the software is DONE and doesn't need constant tinkering with. Maybe the primary authors have more than one project they are working on, and switch off every six months. Or maybe the software has a release schedule greater than six months.
Your scheme would potentially eliminate Slackware, XFree86, TeX, and other stuff. The scheme might work for software that is categorized as "unstable", but otherwise it's a useless idea. But even then don't delete the project, just move it to an inactive state, so it's still there for people to get to.
Freedom leads to a lack of freedom, therefore we need a dictator like the author to decide what projects are to be continued and in what manner.
It's not symmetric, and it's not more than 8. I remain unsurprised :-)
How many embedded systems do you know that require symmetrical multiprocessing? Seriously now. I'm certain there's a few, but if there are any that require 64 CPU's I would be extremely surprised. I would be mildly surprised if there were more than a dozen that needed 8.
It's a few hours later. Well, maybe more like ten to twelve. FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE is official.
Much ado about nothing.
My apologies for my erroneous assumption.
And why you're at it, maybe the USA that has your and my best interests at heart can just give us a lot of money so we don't have to go to work and can spend all our free time surfing slashdot. Maybe they should give us girlfriends too so we don't have to waste our time at the singles bar. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Because 1.72MB is not a standard format.
Tying yourself to a proprietary solution to run proprietary applications for a proprietary OS. Why dont' you just stick with Windows and be done with it?
This may sound sarcastic, but I mean it as a genuine question. You're choosing an OS based on the ability to run native Windows applications. So why not just run Windows and eliminate the middle man?