When will people understand that the desktop is not the OS, and the applications are not the desktop? KDE and Gnome can work on any Unix-standardized computer. In fact, theoretically, KDE at least (not sure about Gnome) can even be the desktop on a Windows system.
The real struggle here is not about whether Linux or Microsoft "gets" the desktop, but about what computing environment people will use in the future. I agree with many of Russ Mitchell's points about the lack of standardization and integration for desktop apps in Linux.
There is a good possibility that all of this argument over a good Office clone such as Koffice will be a moot point in another few years. More and more companies are moving to web-based apps as their computing environments, because there are some clear advantages:
1. The whole application can be controlled and updated from one central point; the server room.
2. Glitches, crashes and bugs on individual users' computers are less problematic, and less likely to cause serious downtime.
3. preventing loading of local files does away with trojan virus proliferation. (how many times have you chased a virus around a corporate network, because idiots keep downloading the same attachment)
4. It is much easier to keep track of realtime company statistics.
5. A clear case of separating presentation from business logic.
6. The client OS can be anything with a valid web browser.
7. The application can even scale to small devices such as handhelds.
8. Tokens can be used to pass a users's application state from one client to another quite easily. Output a report at the office, finish editing your report at home, review it from your handheld on the subway, etc...
There are many other benefits to consider; this is just the beginning. I know that there are both pros and cons to this argument, and not every app should be web-based, but a significant amount (majority) can and will be. The web browser will in a way "become" the desktop. Will Microsoft win this war? Maybe, but maybe my prediction for the future will come true:
1. The browser will become ubiquitous. It will eventually be in everything, in some form or another, because it is such a usefull information tool. This means other devices besides what is traditionally called a computer. Microsoft will lose here, because most "net appliances" or web-connected devices do not run Windows.
2. Maybe Netscape or Mozilla will not be giants of the web browser world, but the technologies they have made as Open Source will. Already the Gecko DHTML rendering engine (which is the core of mozilla) has been used in several other web browsers. It provides to any other browser developer the benefit of NOT having to re-invent the wheel. Gecko has been ported to just about any operating system you can imagine.
3. The graphical user interface we have become used to will gradually merge with the browser. Most user interfaces on all operating systems now have some form of window/mouse interface, so it is just natural to follow this shift. Also, almost every computer or net device will run some sort of internal webserver, to handle its own GUI and to serve data out as defined by users and software.
4. Eventually we will not think in terms of a thing called a "browser" but in terms of what type of information needs to be rendered in what way, with something like XHTML being the underlying basis for all other data rendered to human-readable format. Along with this we will be using XML, XSL, XML-RPC, SOAP, etc... And Javascript/ECMAscript will be the basis of client-side dynamic manipulation of data.
5. During this time, Microsoft will repeatedly try to derail the open standards process by introducing minor changes into the way its XHTML rendering software or it's ECMAscript-parsing software works, but they will keep having to return to the standards as they are embraced by most other companies.
6. In the end it won't matter who makes what browser, as long as it follows the open standards. The rendering of XHTML/Javascript will become as intrinsic a part of the operating system as the concept of "files" and "directories" are now. It will matter who makes the server, though. And here is where open source *nix (Linux/*BSD) will WIN.
7. It will be a good life for those of us programmers who know scripting languages and open standards and ways to tie all this stuff together. It will also be a good life for the "heavy-duty" programmers who can advance the core server-side applications. VB/Delphi/{insert your IDE} programmers might not be so lucky.
Well, what do most companies that use FreeBSD do with it?
Most of them are ISP's, since FreeBSD is, if anything, even a better bet than Linux for stable, cheap hosting. Many of the rest will probably be in some related field, such as web application development and rental, or large-scale web services. (Yahoo uses FreeBSD extensively)
Other popular uses for FreeBSD include firewalling and network storage.
So, learn (in this order):
1. Unix admin chores; how to install, customize, re-compile FreeBSD, and how to maintain it daily, weekly, monthly
2. Networking; TCP/IP, DNS, NAT Firewalling, NFS, FTP, Samba (for windows network storage)
3. Web server install/admin; how to set up Apache, usually with Perl/CGI or mod_perl, and often with PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL. How to do virtual domain hosting.
4. Shell scripting, in at least Bash and Perl, cron jobs, to automate administrative tasks
5. Webserver scripting; Perl and PHP both are best, Java/JSP is not as popular
6. Open source database setup (MySQL at least, Postgres a plus), SQL design and administration goes hand-in-hand with sebserver scripting
7. At least some HTML, so you can handle the output of webserver scripting tasks.
There is a LOT more that can be done with FreeBSD (I haven't even mentioned serious programming, clustering, data warehousing, etc...), but this seems to be the bulk of it. If you can handle at least a couple rows on that list, you can get a job. If you are good at more than 50% of that list, you should be in demand, and if you are profficient in 90% and more, you should be turning down employers, and worth at least $55,000 and UP.
Of course, most of this is not specific to FreeBSD, and can apply to Linux as well.
The real reason MySQL has become so popular is that it is easy to install and start playing with, even for those who know nothing about SQL. To quote my favorite Perl creator, "This is to be construed as a feature". I happen to like PostgreSQL also, especially for complex projects, but for many of the web apps I do, MySQL fits the bill nicely, and I don't have to jump through hoops to get it to run on this or that webserver.
I don't see MySQL as being without technical merit. It simply is what it is, and does that very well, with no need for excuses. Of course I am happy that they are adding the advanced features, (See Monty's comment below about Foreign Keys coming for real) but up until now it has been very good and nicely portable solution to dynamic web development. For advanced enterprise databases, I think we shall see. I have a feeling that in the end both MySQL AND Postgres will rank right up there with any commercial database.
Well, gee... in what part of the world do we find camels? Makes perfect sense to me. OK, that's silly, but it almost had me too, because you tend to notice the title before the icon.
Are you just playing along with the troll? This idiotic post has been circulating for 2 years now. If BSD were truly dying, I think that would have happened by now.
I was using Linux, and am now a happy FreeBSD user. If the current version of FreeBSD were the last, I would still probably be happy using FreeBSD for a few years to come.
There are plenty of "geek" charities where you can donate these computers. See a couple here. Also check out private schools in your area.
Many organizations in third-world countries will use these as production systems. A couple years ago, I managed to scavenge about 12 throw-aways from various companies and sent them to my father-in-law's business in Jamaice, where they were perfectly suitable for their DOS-based accounting system.
Eerie; while I was reading this page, I had another window open with an Altavista advanced search. Suddenly that page refreshed to a "file not found" error, and I noticed in the URL a reference to ad.doubleclick.net, along with the contents of my search query. I backed up and read the source of the Altavista home page, and sure enough, there was the 1 pixel gif.
Shame, Altavista. Guess I will only use alltheweb.com from now on.
Slashdot Mirror
KDE and Gnome are NOT Linux.
When will people understand that the desktop is not the OS, and the applications are not the desktop? KDE and Gnome can work on any Unix-standardized computer. In fact, theoretically, KDE at least (not sure about Gnome) can even be the desktop on a Windows system.
The real struggle here is not about whether Linux or Microsoft "gets" the desktop, but about what computing environment people will use in the future. I agree with many of Russ Mitchell's points about the lack of standardization and integration for desktop apps in Linux.
There is a good possibility that all of this argument over a good Office clone such as Koffice will be a moot point in another few years. More and more companies are moving to web-based apps as their computing environments, because there are some clear advantages:
1. The whole application can be controlled and updated from one central point; the server room.
2. Glitches, crashes and bugs on individual users' computers are less problematic, and less likely to cause serious downtime.
3. preventing loading of local files does away with trojan virus proliferation. (how many times have you chased a virus around a corporate network, because idiots keep downloading the same attachment)
4. It is much easier to keep track of realtime company statistics.
5. A clear case of separating presentation from business logic.
6. The client OS can be anything with a valid web browser.
7. The application can even scale to small devices such as handhelds.
8. Tokens can be used to pass a users's application state from one client to another quite easily. Output a report at the office, finish editing your report at home, review it from your handheld on the subway, etc...
There are many other benefits to consider; this is just the beginning. I know that there are both pros and cons to this argument, and not every app should be web-based, but a significant amount (majority) can and will be. The web browser will in a way "become" the desktop. Will Microsoft win this war? Maybe, but maybe my prediction for the future will come true:
1. The browser will become ubiquitous. It will eventually be in everything, in some form or another, because it is such a usefull information tool. This means other devices besides what is traditionally called a computer. Microsoft will lose here, because most "net appliances" or web-connected devices do not run Windows.
2. Maybe Netscape or Mozilla will not be giants of the web browser world, but the technologies they have made as Open Source will. Already the Gecko DHTML rendering engine (which is the core of mozilla) has been used in several other web browsers. It provides to any other browser developer the benefit of NOT having to re-invent the wheel. Gecko has been ported to just about any operating system you can imagine.
3. The graphical user interface we have become used to will gradually merge with the browser. Most user interfaces on all operating systems now have some form of window/mouse interface, so it is just natural to follow this shift. Also, almost every computer or net device will run some sort of internal webserver, to handle its own GUI and to serve data out as defined by users and software.
4. Eventually we will not think in terms of a thing called a "browser" but in terms of what type of information needs to be rendered in what way, with something like XHTML being the underlying basis for all other data rendered to human-readable format. Along with this we will be using XML, XSL, XML-RPC, SOAP, etc... And Javascript/ECMAscript will be the basis of client-side dynamic manipulation of data.
5. During this time, Microsoft will repeatedly try to derail the open standards process by introducing minor changes into the way its XHTML rendering software or it's ECMAscript-parsing software works, but they will keep having to return to the standards as they are embraced by most other companies.
6. In the end it won't matter who makes what browser, as long as it follows the open standards. The rendering of XHTML/Javascript will become as intrinsic a part of the operating system as the concept of "files" and "directories" are now. It will matter who makes the server, though. And here is where open source *nix (Linux/*BSD) will WIN.
7. It will be a good life for those of us programmers who know scripting languages and open standards and ways to tie all this stuff together. It will also be a good life for the "heavy-duty" programmers who can advance the core server-side applications. VB/Delphi/{insert your IDE} programmers might not be so lucky.
Whattaya think?
Well, what do most companies that use FreeBSD do with it?
Most of them are ISP's, since FreeBSD is, if anything, even a better bet than Linux for stable, cheap hosting. Many of the rest will probably be in some related field, such as web application development and rental, or large-scale web services. (Yahoo uses FreeBSD extensively)
Other popular uses for FreeBSD include firewalling and network storage.
So, learn (in this order):
1. Unix admin chores; how to install, customize, re-compile FreeBSD, and how to maintain it daily, weekly, monthly
2. Networking; TCP/IP, DNS, NAT Firewalling, NFS, FTP, Samba (for windows network storage)
3. Web server install/admin; how to set up Apache, usually with Perl/CGI or mod_perl, and often with PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL. How to do virtual domain hosting.
4. Shell scripting, in at least Bash and Perl, cron jobs, to automate administrative tasks
5. Webserver scripting; Perl and PHP both are best, Java/JSP is not as popular
6. Open source database setup (MySQL at least, Postgres a plus), SQL design and administration goes hand-in-hand with sebserver scripting
7. At least some HTML, so you can handle the output of webserver scripting tasks.
There is a LOT more that can be done with FreeBSD (I haven't even mentioned serious programming, clustering, data warehousing, etc...), but this seems to be the bulk of it. If you can handle at least a couple rows on that list, you can get a job. If you are good at more than 50% of that list, you should be in demand, and if you are profficient in 90% and more, you should be turning down employers, and worth at least $55,000 and UP.
Of course, most of this is not specific to FreeBSD, and can apply to Linux as well.
The real reason MySQL has become so popular is that it is easy to install and start playing with, even for those who know nothing about SQL. To quote my favorite Perl creator, "This is to be construed as a feature". I happen to like PostgreSQL also, especially for complex projects, but for many of the web apps I do, MySQL fits the bill nicely, and I don't have to jump through hoops to get it to run on this or that webserver.
I don't see MySQL as being without technical merit. It simply is what it is, and does that very well, with no need for excuses. Of course I am happy that they are adding the advanced features, (See Monty's comment below about Foreign Keys coming for real) but up until now it has been very good and nicely portable solution to dynamic web development. For advanced enterprise databases, I think we shall see. I have a feeling that in the end both MySQL AND Postgres will rank right up there with any commercial database.
I'm just going to have to keep hitting "refresh" until v .44 comes up ;-).
Eh...? MySQL has had transactions for several releases now. I know, it's not available for all table types... :-( (InnoDB, BerkelyDB tables...)
To me, the fundamental feature missing is foreign key constraint, which I see is not even mentioned among the new features.
Well, gee... in what part of the world do we find camels? Makes perfect sense to me. OK, that's silly, but it almost had me too, because you tend to notice the title before the icon.
Are you just playing along with the troll? This idiotic post has been circulating for 2 years now. If BSD were truly dying, I think that would have happened by now.
I was using Linux, and am now a happy FreeBSD user. If the current version of FreeBSD were the last, I would still probably be happy using FreeBSD for a few years to come.
There are plenty of "geek" charities where you can donate these computers. See a couple here. Also check out private schools in your area.
Many organizations in third-world countries will use these as production systems. A couple years ago, I managed to scavenge about 12 throw-aways from various companies and sent them to my father-in-law's business in Jamaice, where they were perfectly suitable for their DOS-based accounting system.
Moderators -- this had to be a joke. Don't ya get it? I thought it was pretty funny.
Eerie; while I was reading this page, I had another window open with an Altavista advanced search. Suddenly that page refreshed to a "file not found" error, and I noticed in the URL a reference to ad.doubleclick.net, along with the contents of my search query. I backed up and read the source of the Altavista home page, and sure enough, there was the 1 pixel gif.
Shame, Altavista. Guess I will only use alltheweb.com from now on.