I don't know why I am forced to do your homework for you,
You've claimed that the widespread use of Ubuntu will result in more Free software. Ubuntu is already very widespread (#1 distro in terms of new downloads afaik) and I've asked you to provide me with some concrete evidence of that claim. That's not doing my homework for me, it's backing up your claim. As of yet you can't point to a single important piece of Free software written by the Ubuntu developers. That's in sharp contradistinction to the metric shit-ton of code released by Debian, Red Hat, Mandriva, and even SuSE. Now you're backing down to saying that Ubuntu will give some money, sometime when some unspecified goal is met.
it seems to me you should actually support your claims with more than bold accusations (one of which I already proved wrong). Yes, it is currently just a pledge, but give it a bit of time will you?
You mean your link that points to a PLAN to educate Ubuntu users, the details of which are hosted on the NON-FREE Launchpad? Give me a break. Again, you need to show me something better than plans, pledges and PR and you can't. You can't because in the larger scheme of Linux distros Ubuntu takes Free code and gives back very little.
I wish I had a way to stop my code being used by you guys.
All that the link you pointed to me says is:
1) Canonical are working with Linspire's PROPRIETARY ClickNRun crap
and
2) That Ubuntu will "support" nouveau. There is NO COMMITMENT of either money or more importantly CODE to nouveau.
As I said, I want to see concrete support, not PR.
You have to remember that one of the main goals of the Ubuntu project is to allow poor people to use recycled computers. Sometimes those recycled computers have hardware that can be best supported by a binary blob
I call BS on that. In general the hardware that's better supported tends to be older because it takes time to reverse engineer. The stuff that tends to be not supported by Free drivers are newer video cards and newer wireless chips. I'd really like you to show me some data showing that the people that are trying to use an old Celeron in Latin America have a video card unsupported with Free drivers.
The other major class of non-Free software promoted by the Ubuntu project are patent-encumbered codecs for e.g. mp3. All that distributing that stuff does is make it easier for JoeSixpack to ignore the actual consequences of patent law. If he were acting strictly in accordance with the law he'd be a lot more upset and supportive of patent reform.
SUSE 9 is a very old release. If you're going to try comparing them then you might want to use the most recent version. Anyway, as soon as things settle down I'm sure SUSE will be including all sorts of special goodies licensed from Microsoft.
But to me, if Ubuntu achieves a significant desktop penetration while working well with Nvidia display cards, the pressure will be on ATI to actually support their hardware on Linux... or lose marketshare to their competitors.
Resulting in two closed sets of binaries leading to god knows what problems and bugs which will cause stability and security issues just like windows. No thanks. If that's all I wanted then I'd run Mac OS X.
It seems that the mindset of many people is that there's a "desktop war" with Linux trying to become "as good as Windows". Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!
Your post is a very lucid response. I wish I had time to respond more fully to it as it's made me think a bit, but briefly:
1) I'm afraid that I see plenty of evidence of people that don't understand why they'll have a problem keeping their machine secure with a proprietary binary driver on it. I just can't understand someone that believes that loading a big chunk of secret code that's only been looked at by a couple of people is secure. I can only imagine that these are the people that fall for phishing scams. I consider them to be displaying unintelligent behavior and I don't know if that's because of innate problems or lack of training. I find it hard to believe that they're not aware of the security issue. And the result is more trouble than it's worth: read the forums of any major distro and you'll see that the number one pain-in-the-ass request is from some fool that doesn't understand that his problem is exotic and un-debuggable because it hinges around a closed, proprietary driver. The amount of time wasted on this is not trivial.
2) I really don't know who the Ubuntu user population comprises. I do know that it it's an older machine then it's probably reasonably supported with Free drivers (see the list of video cards I pointed to earlier) because the nature of Linux support is that people reverse-engineer this stuff a year or two after release. So, that leads me to believe that there are people buying new hardware without even considering whether the components are supported or are secret, patent-encumbered and non-supportable. If that hypothesis is true then the market is not pressuring manufacturers, and more importantly not rewarding e.g. Intel who definitely get it.
3) Most of the "annoyances" are to do with non-work trivialities (with obvious 3D modelling exceptions which only applies to a tiny fraction of the market). If the pressure on manufacturers is reduced so that someone that avowedly knows and cares nothing about freedom (look at some of the posts in this thread if you don't believe me: these are people that would use a pirated or donated copy of Windows if they could get it instead of Linux) can be temporarily placated then we lose. For nothing. I have no interest in that userbase and I think pandering to them will result in the destruction of freedoms that have been carefully and laboriously built up over the past 15 years or so.
There will likely never be good drivers for the best video cards for Linux until there is a large installed base of users in the market for those video cards on Linux.
Well, actually Intel's X3000 chips are now better supported under Linux than they are under Windows XP and Vista. At present Ubuntu is encouraging people to ignore the problem of video-driver support, to purchase broken crap from nvidia and to penalise Intel by not selecting their boards and integrated cards.
All that Ubuntu is spreading is the idea that somehow or other regardless of what purchasing decisions we make Free software will magically appear. It won't. As the revenues of OpenSuSE, RedHat, Mandriva and Debian are stolen by Ubuntu the ability of those companies to fund the people that write the kernel, the fancy window-managers, the NetworkManagers's etc will be reduced. Our consumer choices have real, tangible effects.
As things stand it's highly unlikely due to the fear of patents that nvidia and ati will ever release the specs for their hardware, let alone open the source code for their drivers. Every dollar that's spent on nvidia/ati hardware goes to fund the patent system and ensures that we won't ever have reasonable access to hardware.
It's just self-defeating and the annoying thing is that it doesn't have to be this way.
care to spell out exactly how Ubuntu hurts Free software?
.... because it relieves the pressure on manufacturers to open up their drivers leaving us with hard-to-support hardware which has to have laborious cleanroom reverse-engineering. Because it confuses people about what Free software is and why linux has been able to evolve to greater security than other OSs. Because it steals market share from other distros that are putting revenue back into hiring hackers that release completely Free software.
So far all the ATI cards upto and including the r300 chipsets, the nvidia cards now supported by the nouveau project (which is very recent) include up to the geforce 8800 (IIRC). You can see the details at free3d.org
The latest Intel G965 chipsets also include an integrated video chip GMA X3000 which is apparently beefy enough to do stuff like Compiz/Bery, Tuxracer just fine.
anything that forces hardware vendors to support Linux on more desktops is more likely to lead to more adequate drivers.
That's verifiably an unsupported idea. The Linux-only market is a tiny fraction of the Windows market and its a waste of ATI/Nvidia's time to put enough engineers on it. That's why their proprietary drivers suck and why the nouveau guys were irritated enough to start trying to write one themselves. Ubuntu is relieving any pressure there might be on these manufacturers and thus actually penalising manufacturers like Intel who have taken the risk of opening up their specs completely.
I don't want to sound harsh because I believe you're genuinely concerned, but I think you're wrong.
Fair enough. Thanks for the rational post. I think you're completely wrong though. By providing what some people want Ubuntu is cannibalizing the market and making it easier for hardware vendors (and arguably in this case Sun) to continue to provide hardware that works inadequately with Linux. Just because a large number of people might be able to get a short-term gain (my nVidia card will now do 3D with this particular version of the driver that will break when the next kernel update is released and may be unsupported in the future because there's no source code). I don't see this as morality, I see it as a practically self-defeating strategy by one Linux distro which is undermining the whole basis on which Linux manages to exist: Free/Open source code.
I realise that what I'm going to say sounds harsh and isn't an option for people with a work requirement for CAD or whatever, but it's possible to buy hardware for wireless, video etc that is completely supported by Free/Open drivers. Other hardware should be sold to Windows users or else junked, it's not that expensive to buy replacements and the actual cost of maintaining it by undermining the pressure to release specs is ultimately going to see us in the same position years down the road
Well, one of the unsupported assumptions in your post is that other distros won't work. You carefully avoid defining "work", but for the purposes of this lets assume that you're talking about the things that I mentioned:
wireless: all my wireless cards are ones that I bought with their state of support in Linux by Free drivers specifically in mind. Works For Me.
video: same as above: Works For Me
java: I'm not doing very much with Java at all, I've played a bit with gcj and Jboss and it seems like they're going to be an alternative to the Sun java, seems to work from my limited knowledge of it: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora. java/2150 : Works For Me (in limited testing).
The release of a GPLv3 Java by Sun will be great. I want the pressure kept on them to live up to their promise to do so. Ubuntu's inclusion of a non-Free version relieves that pressure.
In sum, despite the release of Treacherous Toad (or whatever it's called) there are lots of people working on Free alternatives. The reason that I care is not because of "morality" or something like that, it's because the pushing of non-Free alternatives robs the Free software of market share. That's all. I can't see why people can't just buy hardware that's supported, use the Free software on it and enjoy.
Many of us, including me, have been asking for a long time for a distribution that fucking works.
And your acceptance of non-Free software now, today means that you'll still be asking for the same thing 10 years down the road. It's a long term losing strategy for very minimal short-term gain.
Ubuntu as a distribution fits into the software ecosystem as a parasite. It gives back very litte in terms of original new code or projects and weakens the push for Free software.
We already have GNU/Debian for that
Only for the moment. Canonical is trying (unsuccesfully at the moment because they don't offer a convincing long-term support package in part because some of their included software is closed/proprietary) to move into the commercial/enterprise market. This hurts distros like Debian because there's always some careless, ignorant manager that will switch based on the hype from his over-excited junior sysadmins.
Ubuntu/Canonical's strategy of pushing non-Free software is dangerous for all Linux users, including ironically the users of Ubuntu itself (but if the profiles are anything to be believed these are largely people that were perfectly happy using Microsoft and Apple OSs and just want a free/low-price OS, so they probably don't care).
It seems as though Ubuntu is intent on cementing its position as the cheat of the Linux distros: each new release is notable for the inclusion of innovative code whipped up by hackers hired by Ubuntu, but rather for which non-Free software they include. This is detrimental to the rest of the Linux distros as it weakens the pressure on Sun cement the deal and release the entire Java as Free Software.
Ubuntu seems consistently (whether it be proprietary, closed, non-Free wireless or video card drivers or this) just to be attempting consistently to squeeze a few extra percent of the market share at the expense of the long-term robustness of Free software.
Maybe the next release should be Sneaky Snake or Conniving Chimp ?
Given that your sysadmin has decided that s/he doesn't want you plugging in random media with god knows what on it this is a feature not a bug. Linux is doing what it's supposed to be doing. If you have a legitmate reason for adding this media to the system then request that your admin makes the necessary changes to do this.
I think your guess is roughly accurate, but it misses out an important factor. The people that bother going to a website which is a powerless and toothless as a "rate the elected, non-mandated, non-recallable temporary dictator" are likely to be those that are not left-libertarian, or anarchist. I see a spectrum of people that care about freedom with ultra-right/ultra-left republicans/democrats/blairites/tories right-libertarian left-libertarian. I don't think anyone that's interested in meaningful political freedom is going to be bothered wasting time taking part in an online poll about people whose job it is to lie to them. Give me libertarians of either stripe over people that piously flock to the polls any time.
Here here. I am eagerly awaiting RHEL5, am currently having fun with Fedora Core7 Test2 and can't see what the point of this product announcement is on Slashdot. I hate posts like this. It's just marketing crap. Any sysadmin that's planning on upgrade is already aware of the issue. Give us something with some more meat.
The author states that batch scripting for repetitive tasks which is available in Photoshop is not present in the GIMP. That's just not true. There's a aimple batch mode and a whole lot more with the ability to use Perl and Scheme for scripting. Photoshop's batchmode pales by comparison for power users.
I was impressed by the author's attention to detail and clear specification of the tested systems and the steps involved in using them.
One useful correction would be that programs are just as easy to install on.rpm-based systems as they are on.deb-based systems. The default tool on Fedora Core 6 is called YUM and it does all the dependency resolving necessary. There are even simpler front ends to it such as Pup and Pirut. Package installation, deinstallation, upgrade and update are just as easy as they are with Aptitude.
The problems that the author experiences with 64-bit Flash are unfortunately a result of there being insufficient pressure from GNU/Linux consumers on vendors to supply Free software. A similar problem is experience by many Ubuntu users that rely on the non-Free drivers produced by Nvidia for their graphics cards, or the various non-free binary blobs used for some dodgy wireless hardware. This will continue to be a problem as long as distributions like Ubuntu facilitate the manufacturers of this hardware in evading one of the central principles of Free Software. The manufacturers can't do a good enough job of staying current with the kernel and so GNU/Linux will always be a second class citizen as long as we accept this. Fortunately there are manufacturers, such as Intel that provide Free software for their 3D graphics cards and their wireless chipsets and so it's worth choosing their components when building a new system. (I used to buy ATI stuff because the Free 3d drivers were better than the Free Nvidia ones, but apparently the nouveau project is opening up the list of working Free Nvidia cards. I'll probably be giving Nvidia and ATI both a miss in favour of Intel though).
Unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth is a short-term thinker who is pushing many of the Ubuntu developers into including binary, closed blobs that work until you update your system. This is the tired old "I'm a pragmatist" line which has been releiving the pressure on manufacturers to open their drivers and on users to choose non-closed hardware while purchasing new systems. It's anything but pragmatic and leads to the sort of frustrations seen in the article.
Well, if you go with the premise that you have enough information to determine that there's nothing shady going on then it's a foregone conclusion. But you don't have that information, and I don't have that information. All we have are selective leaks from "security sources" about the case. On his own admission Carpenter performed the followining unethical behaviors:
Disobeyed orders from his superiors
Worked with army intelligence in direct contravention of federal rules
Cracked other people's machines in order to obtain information.
I'd say it's pretty clear that his ethics and morals are questionable based on the above. As I don't have oversight of US intelligence activities and can only point to a long past history of US misdeeds (including supporting and funding terrorists in Latin America -- carried out by another well-known "patriot" called Oliver North, the manufacture of evidence about Iraqi WMDs, the attacks made on CIA operatives by the neocons etc.) I can only express a deep skepticism about what this self-confessed criminal was up to.
If you want to bury your head in the sand about the possibility that there's a little more to this than meets the eye then that's fine, but starting out with an assumption of honesty pretty much precludes all rational discussion. You should add all the above to your list of "this is what we know" and remove assumptions that he's a "good American". All we can observe are the publically reported parts of his behavior.
It'd be a good idea to add in to that list of "stuff we know" the information that Mr.Carpenter and his wife have obtained jobs in the heavily politicised Dept. of Homeland Security (I referenced that earlier here but a few people seem to think that my musings are un-patriotic deviations from groupthink and should be modded down to oblivion, so you might miss them).
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You've claimed that the widespread use of Ubuntu will result in more Free software. Ubuntu is already very widespread (#1 distro in terms of new downloads afaik) and I've asked you to provide me with some concrete evidence of that claim. That's not doing my homework for me, it's backing up your claim. As of yet you can't point to a single important piece of Free software written by the Ubuntu developers. That's in sharp contradistinction to the metric shit-ton of code released by Debian, Red Hat, Mandriva, and even SuSE. Now you're backing down to saying that Ubuntu will give some money, sometime when some unspecified goal is met.
it seems to me you should actually support your claims with more than bold accusations (one of which I already proved wrong). Yes, it is currently just a pledge, but give it a bit of time will you? You mean your link that points to a PLAN to educate Ubuntu users, the details of which are hosted on the NON-FREE Launchpad? Give me a break. Again, you need to show me something better than plans, pledges and PR and you can't. You can't because in the larger scheme of Linux distros Ubuntu takes Free code and gives back very little.
I wish I had a way to stop my code being used by you guys.
All that the link you pointed to me says is:
1) Canonical are working with Linspire's PROPRIETARY ClickNRun crap
and
2) That Ubuntu will "support" nouveau. There is NO COMMITMENT of either money or more importantly CODE to nouveau.
As I said, I want to see concrete support, not PR.
I call BS on that. In general the hardware that's better supported tends to be older because it takes time to reverse engineer. The stuff that tends to be not supported by Free drivers are newer video cards and newer wireless chips. I'd really like you to show me some data showing that the people that are trying to use an old Celeron in Latin America have a video card unsupported with Free drivers.
The other major class of non-Free software promoted by the Ubuntu project are patent-encumbered codecs for e.g. mp3. All that distributing that stuff does is make it easier for JoeSixpack to ignore the actual consequences of patent law. If he were acting strictly in accordance with the law he'd be a lot more upset and supportive of patent reform.
SUSE 9 is a very old release. If you're going to try comparing them then you might want to use the most recent version. Anyway, as soon as things settle down I'm sure SUSE will be including all sorts of special goodies licensed from Microsoft.
Resulting in two closed sets of binaries leading to god knows what problems and bugs which will cause stability and security issues just like windows. No thanks. If that's all I wanted then I'd run Mac OS X.
It seems that the mindset of many people is that there's a "desktop war" with Linux trying to become "as good as Windows". Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it!
Your post is a very lucid response. I wish I had time to respond more fully to it as it's made me think a bit, but briefly:
1) I'm afraid that I see plenty of evidence of people that don't understand why they'll have a problem keeping their machine secure with a proprietary binary driver on it. I just can't understand someone that believes that loading a big chunk of secret code that's only been looked at by a couple of people is secure. I can only imagine that these are the people that fall for phishing scams. I consider them to be displaying unintelligent behavior and I don't know if that's because of innate problems or lack of training. I find it hard to believe that they're not aware of the security issue. And the result is more trouble than it's worth: read the forums of any major distro and you'll see that the number one pain-in-the-ass request is from some fool that doesn't understand that his problem is exotic and un-debuggable because it hinges around a closed, proprietary driver. The amount of time wasted on this is not trivial.
2) I really don't know who the Ubuntu user population comprises. I do know that it it's an older machine then it's probably reasonably supported with Free drivers (see the list of video cards I pointed to earlier) because the nature of Linux support is that people reverse-engineer this stuff a year or two after release. So, that leads me to believe that there are people buying new hardware without even considering whether the components are supported or are secret, patent-encumbered and non-supportable. If that hypothesis is true then the market is not pressuring manufacturers, and more importantly not rewarding e.g. Intel who definitely get it.
3) Most of the "annoyances" are to do with non-work trivialities (with obvious 3D modelling exceptions which only applies to a tiny fraction of the market). If the pressure on manufacturers is reduced so that someone that avowedly knows and cares nothing about freedom (look at some of the posts in this thread if you don't believe me: these are people that would use a pirated or donated copy of Windows if they could get it instead of Linux) can be temporarily placated then we lose. For nothing. I have no interest in that userbase and I think pandering to them will result in the destruction of freedoms that have been carefully and laboriously built up over the past 15 years or so.
There will likely never be good drivers for the best video cards for Linux until there is a large installed base of users in the market for those video cards on Linux.
Well, actually Intel's X3000 chips are now better supported under Linux than they are under Windows XP and Vista. At present Ubuntu is encouraging people to ignore the problem of video-driver support, to purchase broken crap from nvidia and to penalise Intel by not selecting their boards and integrated cards.
All that Ubuntu is spreading is the idea that somehow or other regardless of what purchasing decisions we make Free software will magically appear. It won't. As the revenues of OpenSuSE, RedHat, Mandriva and Debian are stolen by Ubuntu the ability of those companies to fund the people that write the kernel, the fancy window-managers, the NetworkManagers's etc will be reduced. Our consumer choices have real, tangible effects.
As things stand it's highly unlikely due to the fear of patents that nvidia and ati will ever release the specs for their hardware, let alone open the source code for their drivers. Every dollar that's spent on nvidia/ati hardware goes to fund the patent system and ensures that we won't ever have reasonable access to hardware.
It's just self-defeating and the annoying thing is that it doesn't have to be this way.
You can say that with a straight face when we're discussing Feisty Fawn?!
care to spell out exactly how Ubuntu hurts Free software?
.... because it relieves the pressure on manufacturers to open up their drivers leaving us with hard-to-support hardware which has to have laborious cleanroom reverse-engineering. Because it confuses people about what Free software is and why linux has been able to evolve to greater security than other OSs. Because it steals market share from other distros that are putting revenue back into hiring hackers that release completely Free software.
It's pretty damn obvious.
So far all the ATI cards upto and including the r300 chipsets, the nvidia cards now supported by the nouveau project (which is very recent) include up to the geforce 8800 (IIRC). You can see the details at free3d.org
The latest Intel G965 chipsets also include an integrated video chip GMA X3000 which is apparently beefy enough to do stuff like Compiz/Bery, Tuxracer just fine.
anything that forces hardware vendors to support Linux on more desktops is more likely to lead to more adequate drivers. That's verifiably an unsupported idea. The Linux-only market is a tiny fraction of the Windows market and its a waste of ATI/Nvidia's time to put enough engineers on it. That's why their proprietary drivers suck and why the nouveau guys were irritated enough to start trying to write one themselves. Ubuntu is relieving any pressure there might be on these manufacturers and thus actually penalising manufacturers like Intel who have taken the risk of opening up their specs completely.
I don't want to sound harsh because I believe you're genuinely concerned, but I think you're wrong.
Fair enough. Thanks for the rational post. I think you're completely wrong though. By providing what some people want Ubuntu is cannibalizing the market and making it easier for hardware vendors (and arguably in this case Sun) to continue to provide hardware that works inadequately with Linux. Just because a large number of people might be able to get a short-term gain (my nVidia card will now do 3D with this particular version of the driver that will break when the next kernel update is released and may be unsupported in the future because there's no source code). I don't see this as morality, I see it as a practically self-defeating strategy by one Linux distro which is undermining the whole basis on which Linux manages to exist: Free/Open source code.
I realise that what I'm going to say sounds harsh and isn't an option for people with a work requirement for CAD or whatever, but it's possible to buy hardware for wireless, video etc that is completely supported by Free/Open drivers. Other hardware should be sold to Windows users or else junked, it's not that expensive to buy replacements and the actual cost of maintaining it by undermining the pressure to release specs is ultimately going to see us in the same position years down the road
The release of a GPLv3 Java by Sun will be great. I want the pressure kept on them to live up to their promise to do so. Ubuntu's inclusion of a non-Free version relieves that pressure.
In sum, despite the release of Treacherous Toad (or whatever it's called) there are lots of people working on Free alternatives. The reason that I care is not because of "morality" or something like that, it's because the pushing of non-Free alternatives robs the Free software of market share. That's all. I can't see why people can't just buy hardware that's supported, use the Free software on it and enjoy.
Ubuntu is effing it up for everyone else.
Many of us, including me, have been asking for a long time for a distribution that fucking works.
And your acceptance of non-Free software now, today means that you'll still be asking for the same thing 10 years down the road. It's a long term losing strategy for very minimal short-term gain.
Ubuntu as a distribution fits into the software ecosystem as a parasite. It gives back very litte in terms of original new code or projects and weakens the push for Free software.
How about Parasitic Pig?
We already have GNU/Debian for that Only for the moment. Canonical is trying (unsuccesfully at the moment because they don't offer a convincing long-term support package in part because some of their included software is closed/proprietary) to move into the commercial/enterprise market. This hurts distros like Debian because there's always some careless, ignorant manager that will switch based on the hype from his over-excited junior sysadmins. Ubuntu/Canonical's strategy of pushing non-Free software is dangerous for all Linux users, including ironically the users of Ubuntu itself (but if the profiles are anything to be believed these are largely people that were perfectly happy using Microsoft and Apple OSs and just want a free/low-price OS, so they probably don't care).
each new release is notable NOT for the inclusion of innovative code whipped up by hackers hired by Ubuntu
It seems as though Ubuntu is intent on cementing its position as the cheat of the Linux distros: each new release is notable for the inclusion of innovative code whipped up by hackers hired by Ubuntu, but rather for which non-Free software they include. This is detrimental to the rest of the Linux distros as it weakens the pressure on Sun cement the deal and release the entire Java as Free Software.
Ubuntu seems consistently (whether it be proprietary, closed, non-Free wireless or video card drivers or this) just to be attempting consistently to squeeze a few extra percent of the market share at the expense of the long-term robustness of Free software.
Maybe the next release should be Sneaky Snake or Conniving Chimp ?
Given that your sysadmin has decided that s/he doesn't want you plugging in random media with god knows what on it this is a feature not a bug. Linux is doing what it's supposed to be doing. If you have a legitmate reason for adding this media to the system then request that your admin makes the necessary changes to do this.
I think your guess is roughly accurate, but it misses out an important factor. The people that bother going to a website which is a powerless and toothless as a "rate the elected, non-mandated, non-recallable temporary dictator" are likely to be those that are not left-libertarian, or anarchist. I see a spectrum of people that care about freedom with ultra-right/ultra-left republicans/democrats/blairites/tories right-libertarian left-libertarian. I don't think anyone that's interested in meaningful political freedom is going to be bothered wasting time taking part in an online poll about people whose job it is to lie to them. Give me libertarians of either stripe over people that piously flock to the polls any time.
Kdrive (referenced in this project) and TinyX are roughly the same thing. The name just changed once Keith Packard got it integrated into Xorg
This is just such a great project. It's absolutely awesome. Small, fast, cool: choose any three and rejoice!
The CentOSPlus repository has rpms for PHP5 since at least mid-2006. Still I take your point.
Here here. I am eagerly awaiting RHEL5, am currently having fun with Fedora Core7 Test2 and can't see what the point of this product announcement is on Slashdot. I hate posts like this. It's just marketing crap. Any sysadmin that's planning on upgrade is already aware of the issue. Give us something with some more meat.
The author states that batch scripting for repetitive tasks which is available in Photoshop is not present in the GIMP. That's just not true. There's a aimple batch mode and a whole lot more with the ability to use Perl and Scheme for scripting. Photoshop's batchmode pales by comparison for power users.
I was impressed by the author's attention to detail and clear specification of the tested systems and the steps involved in using them.
One useful correction would be that programs are just as easy to install on .rpm-based systems as they are on .deb-based systems. The default tool on Fedora Core 6 is called YUM and it does all the dependency resolving necessary. There are even simpler front ends to it such as Pup and Pirut. Package installation, deinstallation, upgrade and update are just as easy as they are with Aptitude.
The problems that the author experiences with 64-bit Flash are unfortunately a result of there being insufficient pressure from GNU/Linux consumers on vendors to supply Free software. A similar problem is experience by many Ubuntu users that rely on the non-Free drivers produced by Nvidia for their graphics cards, or the various non-free binary blobs used for some dodgy wireless hardware. This will continue to be a problem as long as distributions like Ubuntu facilitate the manufacturers of this hardware in evading one of the central principles of Free Software. The manufacturers can't do a good enough job of staying current with the kernel and so GNU/Linux will always be a second class citizen as long as we accept this. Fortunately there are manufacturers, such as Intel that provide Free software for their 3D graphics cards and their wireless chipsets and so it's worth choosing their components when building a new system. (I used to buy ATI stuff because the Free 3d drivers were better than the Free Nvidia ones, but apparently the nouveau project is opening up the list of working Free Nvidia cards. I'll probably be giving Nvidia and ATI both a miss in favour of Intel though).
Unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth is a short-term thinker who is pushing many of the Ubuntu developers into including binary, closed blobs that work until you update your system. This is the tired old "I'm a pragmatist" line which has been releiving the pressure on manufacturers to open their drivers and on users to choose non-closed hardware while purchasing new systems. It's anything but pragmatic and leads to the sort of frustrations seen in the article.
Well, if you go with the premise that you have enough information to determine that there's nothing shady going on then it's a foregone conclusion. But you don't have that information, and I don't have that information. All we have are selective leaks from "security sources" about the case. On his own admission Carpenter performed the followining unethical behaviors:
I'd say it's pretty clear that his ethics and morals are questionable based on the above. As I don't have oversight of US intelligence activities and can only point to a long past history of US misdeeds (including supporting and funding terrorists in Latin America -- carried out by another well-known "patriot" called Oliver North, the manufacture of evidence about Iraqi WMDs, the attacks made on CIA operatives by the neocons etc.) I can only express a deep skepticism about what this self-confessed criminal was up to.
If you want to bury your head in the sand about the possibility that there's a little more to this than meets the eye then that's fine, but starting out with an assumption of honesty pretty much precludes all rational discussion. You should add all the above to your list of "this is what we know" and remove assumptions that he's a "good American". All we can observe are the publically reported parts of his behavior.
It'd be a good idea to add in to that list of "stuff we know" the information that Mr.Carpenter and his wife have obtained jobs in the heavily politicised Dept. of Homeland Security (I referenced that earlier here but a few people seem to think that my musings are un-patriotic deviations from groupthink and should be modded down to oblivion, so you might miss them).