Thanks to this premature unofficial announcement, the main Apache system is getting slashdotted and the mirrors have to compete just to get the files. So no-one is really getting any advantage from the world-wide distributed availability.
Please, don't get so melodramatic. ftp access can be controlled so I don't think they are being slashdotted. My guess is that mirror servers don't use anonymous account in the Apache server so I don't actually compete with them.
I can wait for the main file but I was happy to download ftp.apache.org/dist/CHANGES_1.3 (~300kB) so I'm grateful for the link.
Thats not Microsoft's fault, that is the people who write the software.
Mac fans have been repeating the same argument for many many years. The thing is that however bad a program is, it shouldn't be able to freeze the whole system. With Linux you kill the program and if you care you can examine it's core dump. With Win and Mac most of the times you are forced to reboot because the faulty app has taken down the whole system.
So the responsibility for an unstable OS is precisely the people's that wrote it.
I read a book about programming by a prominent MS developer some years ago. In it he advised against using 'defensive programming'. This is a style of coding that makes the bugs in your program harder to track but it also fools you that there are fewer bugs present than there actually are.
It is obvious that MS programmers continue to use this technique and that makes their bugs harder to reproduce and thus harder to get rid of. If you add to that the inclination to reboot in order to avoid tackling even the most trivial of problems (like the log file that was filled up in their beta IIS2K) and what you get is a system that is indeed quite hard to debug. Add to this their bloated libraries, add the fact that they don't actually need to produce a stable OS because otherwise it would be easier for them to convince you to buy their next version three years later by promising you that they killed all previous bugs, and you'll begin to understand why their OS is inferior in terms of robustness.
This post is getting quite long but let's mention also that their code has been seen by less people literate enough to be able to correct any mistakes.
You could argue of course that they have more *features*. And you would be right. It's all a matter of priorities.
If I haven't misunderstood their statements, MS themselves say that 1/3 to 1/2 of all Win32 apps are going to be incompatible with W2K. They say it even for the NT apps which I find strange.
Otherwise you are absolutely right that overzealous advocacy does more harm than good. Judging from the posts here it would seem that most of the time Win machines are in rebooting state. But these posts come from people that have very little tollerance to instability (mostly SysAdmins) and software that is at the same time buggy, proprietary, and mandatory really pisses them off.
Having to reboot my Win workstation every 2-3 days doesn't bother me at all. But this is at least two orders of magnitude less stable than an average Linux installation, and for a server this counts.
I regret that I lack the skills to hack their site in order to hide all those stupid 'M$ sux, Linux rulez' messages from their guest book. There's no other site I could think of that could make Linux users look more imature than this one.
I think that there are at least two people that influenced our century more than Hitler. Their actions are still not so well exposed but more and more is being published. They are of course Lenin and Stalin. They didn't discriminate people against their race but against their beliefs and moral values.
Two prominent contemporary Russian authors (Igor Bounich and Vladimir Souvorov) suggest that Hitler wouldn't have come to power without the help from the USSR and WW2 would have begun with or without him. This isn't so far fetched if you bother to read them.
Communism is much more dangerous for the mankind than fascism. History proved that it is far more vital.
I guess I didn't express myself clear enough. Imagine that 'you' is a software company that would like to embrace and extend the source code without giving away theirs. With GPL 2.0 this is suposedly impossible. But if a future version of it appears which contains a legal backdoor than the company in question could take advantage of it.
Is this a danger only I am able to see or is it just my imagination?
Re:Memory Usage ?(or Memory more important than CP
on
Some KDE news
·
· Score: 1
Run Ktop. Mine shows that total memory consumption with X, KDE, and 3-4 small apps running is about 24 MB. I have a Celery 300A with 64 MB and much of the rest of my RAM is used for buffering and caching. So I presume that it would run quite happily in 32 MB. I won't be surprised if 2.0 with KOffice uses more, because of MICO.
No matter how much programs I start I've never seen a single byte getting swapped. But I don't complain:)
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Ok now, I'm not a lawyer but I am stunned every time I see this because it appears not only in KDE but elsewhere as well. I think GNU GPL is very well thought out and it was it that made the revolution possible. I don't have any reasons to think that its next versions won't be even better but theoretically anything is possible.
So, my question is: Isn't it absurd to allow your product to be used under a license which isn't created yet? I mean, the developper can only hope that the next version will keep the free spirit.
If you allow a bug to crawl into your code you can kill it afterwards and then release a subsequent version without the bug. Everyone will start to use the new version to avoid the bug. If, however, there turns out to be a hole in some future version of the GPL, all software under such loose license would be possible to be sucked from that hole. No subsequent version would be able to cure that because it is the user that decides which version of the GPL to use.
Ok, this is probably off topic but it could be useful if someone is wondering whether to love or to hate Borland.
They had an excellent TUI complete with buttons, windows, pop down menus, radio and check boxes, text editing, etc. It was extremely well thought out and unbeatable for C++ development/learning in text mode. Worked both with mouse and keyboard.
They now distribute it freely. I couldn't find a complete license agreement but you should be able to develop BSD style licensed programs with it blazingly fast (at least the UI when you become acquainted). It is now ported to Linux though I haven't had a chance or trying it but you can download it here:
Even in DOS days when I bought BC++ 3.10, TVision came with its complete source code. I made a database program combining it with Paradox Engine. The whole thing worked flawlessly without a memory manager, i.e. with less than 640 kB. I plan to do the same thing with some free SQL in Linux one day.
I bought at the time Borland C++ 3.10 with Application Frameworks even though its cost was $500. These are two and a half my monthly salaries now. This was in fact almost the only software that I ever bought. You can quite easily guess why.
The coolest thing in it, apart from the fact that I had printed documentation, was that its libraries were available in source. I am a self-made programmer, and not only that but I also never had a chance to work with people from which to learn and this was my first encounter with professionally written source code. I'll never forget those days.
Let's forget the price now. I wouldn't buy their software again because with Linux I have access even to the compiler's source code (thanks to GNU of course). I like companies like Borland and Corel and I wish them luck in beating the Redmond giant but their chances are slim. I believe that the days of mass appeal proprietary software are numbered. One exception of course is games. No matter how many free games there are, the demand for more won't decrease. They are like books or movies: the good ones only increase the appetite for more.
Thanks, Billy, for seeing that the GPL is a form of communism and enslavement designed to hurt some people and help others.
OK, the second part is right: some people are hurt, like investors in software companies being in direct competition with GPLed software, and of course many people are helped.
But where did you take the communism and enslavement thing from? GPLed software gives rights to people that no proprietary system ever gave them. Of course, GPL is more restrictive than X or BSD. But it only restricts you in taking away other people's rights.
If you live in a democracy you don't have the right to hurt other people but you are free to pursue your happiness in (almost) any other way. If you are a slave or live in a communist state OTOH, other people own your life or at least part of it.
One could argue that slave owners have more rights than democratic citizens. But if you consider denying the right to own slaves to be an advancement why don't you see the same progress in software made by the GPL?
...yet somehow the "linux community" gets the credit for the complete system
Ok, why is Linux much more than the kernel itself? I like FreeBSD. It's the next best thing to the GPLed software. But it isn't a coincidence that GNU software and Linux are getting all the attention. It's because they not only have much to show but because they have even more to promise: that they'll always be free (mostly speech but beer too).
Take a look at the projects that are developing right now. Those that are not ported to BSD today will be ported tomorrow. And they day after tomorrow most of them will be ported even to that other OS from Redmond. So next week everyone will have forgotten that they were inspired by the success of Linux. Still people will remember that freedom is the most important thing.
Are you happy now? The best (IMHO) distro is lagging more and more because you feared they were too big and badmouthed them on any possible occasion. Now noone dares to aproach them.
Hey, don't touch that score! I know this is off topic. But at least it isn't flamebait as you think.
I stand corrected. Thanks for the link. Sorry, Corel.
I don't have anything against Debian or FreeBSD. I just find it laughable to be paranoid about Red Hat not because they couldn't turn out to be evil but because it would be so easy to walk away from them if they do. And this, even if one sticks to RPMs.
Red Hat's influence will rise though with the expanding of the Linux user base. And if not theirs, than Debian's or some other distro. Because users are paranoid as well. Especially corporate ones will want to get it from "the source". And Linux could become a target for Trojan horses, so it's only natural.
As far as Corel are concerned, their GPLed code deserves praise, but what chance do you think they 'll have if by the end of the year when their office suit gets released, KDE Office is already out there?
"In contrast to Corel's copious non-distro specific efforts, Metrowerks, who has offered nothing to the free software community, comes out with plans to release their tool packaged only for redhat."
It's not about MetroWerks here. Even if they had a bad name that wouldn't be a reason enough to bash Red Hat. If Microsoft release Office for Linux tomorrow, would you switch to BSD just because of that? Would you really be so easy to be manipulated?
OK, Debian is easier for you, fair enough. But if we have to compare Corel with Red Hat, that's another matter. AFAIK Corel has only expressed intentions to support WINE and KDE. Whereas Red Hat not only releases all their software with the GPL but they also pay GNOME and KDE programmers to produce even more GPLed code.
BTW, how do you manage to switch to a new kernel without rebooting?
Why didn't anyone cried 'foul' when Corel announced they will be bundling their office suit with Debian GNU/Linux? Yes, I know that Debian is a noncommercial organization but are we against the Balkanization or are we against someone making money out of Linux?
1. Anyone who bothered to read the answers to the article in Linux Today would know that Red Hat did not sign an exclusive contract with MetroWerks.
2. Corel, as well as MetroWerks have the right to support whatever distro they prefer, even creating their own. I don't see any reason why they should be forced to support each and every distro.
I think the article is heavily biased and it hurts not only Red Hat but the entire Linux community because it will put off any other software vendor that considers porting to Linux.
My Linux is Red Hat precisely because of everything they return to the whole community (well, and because they are the easiest to maintain). And it would be absurd to begin to dislike them only because a software company likes them as well. Please, let's try to be more mature about these things.
I'd hate to see even commercial OSes disappear because choice is good. Both for the user and for the developer.
But please, how is Apple better than Microsoft? Even with that Darwin thing. Even with Mach underneath.
Eventually all mass consumer software will become free. Whoever wants to escape the wrath of the creditors should think of becomming an ISP or web portal, or whatever.
I'd be happy to admit that you could be right and I - wrong. I'm a big fan of KDE, I find it great and more beautiful, more powerful, and not less intuitive than Windows. I just meant that it is not completely finished yet and neither is GNOME. From what I've seen KDE 2.0 promisses to wipe away all other GUIs.
OTOH I cannot agree that you can separate installation from usage. To be easy to use means also to be easy to install because if you know that an installation is a no brain then you won't be afraid to tweak your system and add/remove packages.
Not that it's hard to install. With Red Hat it's a fairly simple job. The hardware recognition could be improved though. When I read the advice that one should get all settings from the Device Manager in Windows I'm always reminded that the 'world domination' will have to wait a little more.
And I also like to 'point and drool'. Heck, I like to drool without even pointing.:-)
"My mostly computer-illiterate mom can use Linux just fine."
Please, let's not get carried away. Your mom wouldn't be able to use it if you weren't around to help her and administer the machine. As much as I'd like to be able to recommend Linux to near illiterates, it still isn't there yet.
"...Linux has always been able to use a file for swap... I first saw it in Unix in the mid '80s."
I am aware that Linux can swap to a file as well but it isn't recommended. It would be easier to set but not as robust. Actually your words prove my point. When there is a design choice Linux would choose stability, and Windows is more likely to choose 'easyness'. So there.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks to this premature unofficial announcement, the main Apache system is getting slashdotted and the mirrors have to compete just to get the files. So no-one is really getting any advantage from the world-wide distributed availability.
Please, don't get so melodramatic. ftp access can be controlled so I don't think they are being slashdotted. My guess is that mirror servers don't use anonymous account in the Apache server so I don't actually compete with them.
I can wait for the main file but I was happy to download ftp.apache.org/dist/CHANGES_1.3 (~300kB) so I'm grateful for the link.
Thats not Microsoft's fault, that is the people who write the software.
Mac fans have been repeating the same argument for many many years. The thing is that however bad a program is, it shouldn't be able to freeze the whole system. With Linux you kill the program and if you care you can examine it's core dump. With Win and Mac most of the times you are forced to reboot because the faulty app has taken down the whole system.
So the responsibility for an unstable OS is precisely the people's that wrote it.
I read a book about programming by a prominent MS developer some years ago. In it he advised against using 'defensive programming'. This is a style of coding that makes the bugs in your program harder to track but it also fools you that there are fewer bugs present than there actually are.
It is obvious that MS programmers continue to use this technique and that makes their bugs harder to reproduce and thus harder to get rid of. If you add to that the inclination to reboot in order to avoid tackling even the most trivial of problems (like the log file that was filled up in their beta IIS2K) and what you get is a system that is indeed quite hard to debug. Add to this their bloated libraries, add the fact that they don't actually need to produce a stable OS because otherwise it would be easier for them to convince you to buy their next version three years later by promising you that they killed all previous bugs, and you'll begin to understand why their OS is inferior in terms of robustness.
This post is getting quite long but let's mention also that their code has been seen by less people literate enough to be able to correct any mistakes.
You could argue of course that they have more *features*. And you would be right. It's all a matter of priorities.
If I haven't misunderstood their statements, MS themselves say that 1/3 to 1/2 of all Win32 apps are going to be incompatible with W2K. They say it even for the NT apps which I find strange.
Otherwise you are absolutely right that overzealous advocacy does more harm than good. Judging from the posts here it would seem that most of the time Win machines are in rebooting state. But these posts come from people that have very little tollerance to instability (mostly SysAdmins) and software that is at the same time buggy, proprietary, and mandatory really pisses them off.
Having to reboot my Win workstation every 2-3 days doesn't bother me at all. But this is at least two orders of magnitude less stable than an average Linux installation, and for a server this counts.
I regret that I lack the skills to hack their site in order to hide all those stupid 'M$ sux, Linux rulez' messages from their guest book. There's no other site I could think of that could make Linux users look more imature than this one.
Communism is basicaly a society based upon slavery. If you don't find that evil, than obviously communism isn't inherently evil, either.
I think that there are at least two people that influenced our century more than Hitler. Their actions are still not so well exposed but more and more is being published. They are of course Lenin and Stalin. They didn't discriminate people against their race but against their beliefs and moral values.
Two prominent contemporary Russian authors (Igor Bounich and Vladimir Souvorov) suggest that Hitler wouldn't have come to power without the help from the USSR and WW2 would have begun with or without him. This isn't so far fetched if you bother to read them.
Communism is much more dangerous for the mankind than fascism. History proved that it is far more vital.
I guess I didn't express myself clear enough. Imagine that 'you' is a software company that would like to embrace and extend the source code without giving away theirs. With GPL 2.0 this is suposedly impossible. But if a future version of it appears which contains a legal backdoor than the company in question could take advantage of it.
Is this a danger only I am able to see or is it just my imagination?
Run Ktop. Mine shows that total memory consumption with X, KDE, and 3-4 small apps running is about 24 MB. I have a Celery 300A with 64 MB and much of the rest of my RAM is used for buffering and caching. So I presume that it would run quite happily in 32 MB. I won't be surprised if 2.0 with KOffice uses more, because of MICO.
:)
No matter how much programs I start I've never seen a single byte getting swapped. But I don't complain
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
Ok now, I'm not a lawyer but I am stunned every time I see this because it appears not only in KDE but elsewhere as well. I think GNU GPL is very well thought out and it was it that made the revolution possible. I don't have any reasons to think that its next versions won't be even better but theoretically anything is possible.
So, my question is: Isn't it absurd to allow your product to be used under a license which isn't created yet? I mean, the developper can only hope that the next version will keep the free spirit.
If you allow a bug to crawl into your code you can kill it afterwards and then release a subsequent version without the bug. Everyone will start to use the new version to avoid the bug. If, however, there turns out to be a hole in some future version of the GPL, all software under such loose license would be possible to be sucked from that hole. No subsequent version would be able to cure that because it is the user that decides which version of the GPL to use.
Well, certainly, but nevertheless MS claim that they their success is based on listening to customers, not listening to shareholders :)
If you don't like it, go live in a tarpaper shack in some communist country...
No, please stay where you are and make a difference!
They had an excellent TUI complete with buttons, windows, pop down menus, radio and check boxes, text editing, etc. It was extremely well thought out and unbeatable for C++ development/learning in text mode. Worked both with mouse and keyboard.
They now distribute it freely. I couldn't find a complete license agreement but you should be able to develop BSD style licensed programs with it blazingly fast (at least the UI when you become acquainted). It is now ported to Linux though I haven't had a chance or trying it but you can download it here:
Even in DOS days when I bought BC++ 3.10, TVision came with its complete source code. I made a database program combining it with Paradox Engine. The whole thing worked flawlessly without a memory manager, i.e. with less than 640 kB. I plan to do the same thing with some free SQL in Linux one day.
I bought at the time Borland C++ 3.10 with Application Frameworks even though its cost was $500. These are two and a half my monthly salaries now. This was in fact almost the only software that I ever bought. You can quite easily guess why.
The coolest thing in it, apart from the fact that I had printed documentation, was that its libraries were available in source. I am a self-made programmer, and not only that but I also never had a chance to work with people from which to learn and this was my first encounter with professionally written source code. I'll never forget those days.
Let's forget the price now. I wouldn't buy their software again because with Linux I have access even to the compiler's source code (thanks to GNU of course). I like companies like Borland and Corel and I wish them luck in beating the Redmond giant but their chances are slim. I believe that the days of mass appeal proprietary software are numbered. One exception of course is games. No matter how many free games there are, the demand for more won't decrease. They are like books or movies: the good ones only increase the appetite for more.
OK, the second part is right: some people are hurt, like investors in software companies being in direct competition with GPLed software, and of course many people are helped.
But where did you take the communism and enslavement thing from? GPLed software gives rights to people that no proprietary system ever gave them. Of course, GPL is more restrictive than X or BSD. But it only restricts you in taking away other people's rights.
If you live in a democracy you don't have the right to hurt other people but you are free to pursue your happiness in (almost) any other way. If you are a slave or live in a communist state OTOH, other people own your life or at least part of it.
One could argue that slave owners have more rights than democratic citizens. But if you consider denying the right to own slaves to be an advancement why don't you see the same progress in software made by the GPL?
Ok, why is Linux much more than the kernel itself? I like FreeBSD. It's the next best thing to the GPLed software. But it isn't a coincidence that GNU software and Linux are getting all the attention. It's because they not only have much to show but because they have even more to promise: that they'll always be free (mostly speech but beer too).
Take a look at the projects that are developing right now. Those that are not ported to BSD today will be ported tomorrow. And they day after tomorrow most of them will be ported even to that other OS from Redmond. So next week everyone will have forgotten that they were inspired by the success of Linux. Still people will remember that freedom is the most important thing.
It's not politically uncorrect anymore, but who knows - QPL could be against his religion or something.
Are you happy now? The best (IMHO) distro is lagging more and more because you feared they were too big and badmouthed them on any possible occasion. Now noone dares to aproach them.
Hey, don't touch that score! I know this is off topic. But at least it isn't flamebait as you think.
Ha! Power!
./ Don't ask me how I'm gonna feel in the morning after all those lightnings...
I am lucky there's an electric storm tonight so I'm able to read
There's a closing bracket at the end of the address. Remove it to be able to go to the article.
I stand corrected. Thanks for the link. Sorry, Corel.
I don't have anything against Debian or FreeBSD. I just find it laughable to be paranoid about Red Hat not because they couldn't turn out to be evil but because it would be so easy to walk away from them if they do. And this, even if one sticks to RPMs.
Red Hat's influence will rise though with the expanding of the Linux user base. And if not theirs, than Debian's or some other distro. Because users are paranoid as well. Especially corporate ones will want to get it from "the source". And Linux could become a target for Trojan horses, so it's only natural.
As far as Corel are concerned, their GPLed code deserves praise, but what chance do you think they 'll have if by the end of the year when their office suit gets released, KDE Office is already out there?
It's not about MetroWerks here. Even if they had a bad name that wouldn't be a reason enough to bash Red Hat. If Microsoft release Office for Linux tomorrow, would you switch to BSD just because of that? Would you really be so easy to be manipulated?
OK, Debian is easier for you, fair enough. But if we have to compare Corel with Red Hat, that's another matter. AFAIK Corel has only expressed intentions to support WINE and KDE. Whereas Red Hat not only releases all their software with the GPL but they also pay GNOME and KDE programmers to produce even more GPLed code.
BTW, how do you manage to switch to a new kernel without rebooting?
1. Anyone who bothered to read the answers to the article in Linux Today would know that Red Hat did not sign an exclusive contract with MetroWerks.
2. Corel, as well as MetroWerks have the right to support whatever distro they prefer, even creating their own. I don't see any reason why they should be forced to support each and every distro.
I think the article is heavily biased and it hurts not only Red Hat but the entire Linux community because it will put off any other software vendor that considers porting to Linux.
My Linux is Red Hat precisely because of everything they return to the whole community (well, and because they are the easiest to maintain). And it would be absurd to begin to dislike them only because a software company likes them as well. Please, let's try to be more mature about these things.
I missed reading those articles when I met them because I never thought it could happen to me. Now I would like a second chance...
... as long as they were GPLed.
I'd hate to see even commercial OSes disappear because choice is good. Both for the user and for the developer.
But please, how is Apple better than Microsoft? Even with that Darwin thing. Even with Mach underneath.
Eventually all mass consumer software will become free. Whoever wants to escape the wrath of the creditors should think of becomming an ISP or web portal, or whatever.
I'd be happy to admit that you could be right and I - wrong. I'm a big fan of KDE, I find it great and more beautiful, more powerful, and not less intuitive than Windows. I just meant that it is not completely finished yet and neither is GNOME. From what I've seen KDE 2.0 promisses to wipe away all other GUIs.
:-)
OTOH I cannot agree that you can separate installation from usage. To be easy to use means also to be easy to install because if you know that an installation is a no brain then you won't be afraid to tweak your system and add/remove packages.
Not that it's hard to install. With Red Hat it's a fairly simple job. The hardware recognition could be improved though. When I read the advice that one should get all settings from the Device Manager in Windows I'm always reminded that the 'world domination' will have to wait a little more.
And I also like to 'point and drool'. Heck, I like to drool without even pointing.
Please, let's not get carried away. Your mom wouldn't be able to use it if you weren't around to help her and administer the machine. As much as I'd like to be able to recommend Linux to near illiterates, it still isn't there yet.
"...Linux has always been able to use a file for swap... I first saw it in Unix in the mid '80s."
I am aware that Linux can swap to a file as well but it isn't recommended. It would be easier to set but not as robust. Actually your words prove my point. When there is a design choice Linux would choose stability, and Windows is more likely to choose 'easyness'. So there.