I could be wrong, but I'm betting it's NOT a spoof.
I've been exposed to several examples of extreme fundamentalist religious fanaticism that were every bit this ludicrous.
Check out the homepage of the group that takes credit for creating the site.
Sadly, it looks like a legit ultra-fundamentalist group.
The wording and syntax of their rhetoric is exactly like that of other such groups I have seen. I saw no blatant giveaways that it was a spoof, even in the "spork" page.
On a sort-of related note regarding arguing for Linux on a single task by single task basis...
One thing I've found about many people is that the most effective way to persuade them to do something is to convince them that it was *their* idea. This technique can be used on managers, customers, whoever you want to persuade toward a particular conclusion. Present them with facts and figures without any emotion or interjecting of ones own opinions whatsoever and let them reach the desired conclusion on their own.
This is a VERY subtle skill. One that I am not that good at. I've seen a rare few individuals who are masters at it.
This sort of persuasion is beginning to be seen from the Linux community.
How?
By the fact that "mainstream" press is starting to publish numerous pro-linux articles. Publications considered credible by non-technical management types (who nevertheless make technical decisions in all too many companies) are painting Linux in a positive light.
While this article is still too geeky (Linux vs. GNU/Linux flamewar reference), too long winded and rambly, and too laden with errors ("Linux does not support Plug and Play", puhLEEEZE!) to show to the non-technical pointy haired management type yet, it has a lot of the right stuff that they need to know buried in it.
An executive summary that condensed it into a more concise form, and stripped out the geekiness and the errors would be an excellent article for a manager's summary.
Now, to get one written and published in a publication with credibility in management...
Each of the OS's you mentioned are superior in almost every respect to Windows.
The ideal OS, indeed the OS that would be best for the good of computing for the whole planet is one thats: 1) Open Source, so that those who need to can modify it, and 2) Solid and reliable.
There is room in the world for several such OS's to co-exist and compliment each other.
Competition and openness in this market is a good thing and drives overall improvement.
I agree that ESR's 750 million figure for Linux alone is insanely high and unrealistic.
I do believe, however, that Open Source software is the wave of the future. It's already well on its way to establishing itself as such.
To me, the ideal OS is one that is open and hackable for the programmers who want to hack it, yet is completely anonymous to the non-hacker user.
That is, to the non-hacker, the OS should be easy to set up and configure, then he can just forget about it. It runs solidly with little maintenance.
It should be like the firmware in a VCR. Nobody knows or cares who wrote the code in a VCR. If it works as advertised we just transparently use it and everyone's happy.
I think open source OS's have the greatest chance of achieving this. They are driven by the needs of the people who use them, and clearly, they are the most robust OS's in terms of reliability and resistance to crashing.
I mentioned that the OS should be anonymous. For the non-hacker, it should do its job quietly with minimal fanfare. Windows is the antithesis of this. That stinkin' flying windows logo, or other distinctly MicroSoft icons are in your face with virtually every click of the mouse! And they say open source developers have big egos!
I think this aspect of Linux, will eventually be a huge part of its appeal to a large market.
This is the second or third time I'm aware of that CNN reprinted a pro-linux article from a Linux orented publication. (In this case Linux World.)
Although you would expect anything Linux World wrote about Linux to be pro-linux (DUH!), the fact that CNN is reprinting these pro-Linux articles indicates that we have a Linux advocate within their ranks.
Having a main stream news outlet that has at least one Linux advocate reporter, who obviously isn't fooled by MS FUD, is a wonderful thing for the Linux community.
The majority of main stream media reports about Linux run from the "It's user interface wasn't identical to Windows so the verdict is: 'it's too hard to use'", all the way to regurgitated MicroSoft FUD.
>Companies like Red Hat... take Linux technology with a lot less value added, and >they package it up and say, "Hey, this is better than SCO." Well, it isn't. And very >few customers are buying that story. >
Actually, they don't have to buy the story, they're smart enough to figure it out for themselves. click here for a little comment I wrote previously about this line of thinking.
>So now we've got some punk young kids who've taken and engineered pieces >around the Unix [kernel]
I'm a 37 year old former UNIX nerd, who has been programming in UNIX since about 1979, and am now a serious Linux enthusiast. Linux (and other free os's like FreeBSD) are the next wave, the next step in the evolution of the serious OS.
I'll take being called a "punk young kid" by this clueless guy as a compliment.
In 1979 I was a punk kid (and really was a kid) working on an operating system that no one took seriously. In 1979, UNIX: just a toy for a lot of punk kid hackers...
Like I say, a complement, apparently, I'm keeping current!
>A: As far as I'm concerned, it's free R&D. A lot of developers who have always >preferred Unix are developing on Linux. The last thing in the world I want is some >cool app and have my customer go, "Oh, God, if I only had Linux, I could get that >app." > SCO users say that every day. That's one reason many of them are abandoning SCO for Linux in droves. Click on the link above, oh what the hell here it is again, for an example of a "cool app" that took for bloody-ever to be ported to SCO.
Linux is not cutting DEEPLY into SCO's market because of slick advertising and empty hype. It's cutting into their market share because it is the operating system designed by the end users for the end users, like UNIX used to be. People are switching from SCO to Linux in huge waves because Linux works better.
>Another thing is reliability. It takes millions of dollars to run [reliability] tests. It takes >expensive people, expensive labs, expensive [electric] bills, racks and racks of >hardware, and really boring, hard, grubby work. It isn't stuff that people do for fun at >home with volunteers. > Exactly!
This point proves that the primary reason people are switching to Linux is not to save a buck up front, but because Linux has the much lower total cost of ownership over the long haul.
As a former SCO developer, I know this to be true.
I was pigeonholing and oversimplifying to make a point.
When I was in high school, I was a straight-A student, creative, and quiet.
I was NOT socially inept, IMHO. To the contrary, I had quite a few good friends, (some of whom are still good friends, even though we all live in different states) and attended many school social functions. However, I had little or no interest in sports.
However, the administration of the school, yes the ADMINISTRATION, more than the students, put out the message: "If you aren't a jock, you're weird and you're a failure."
Of course, neither I nor my friends ever remotely contemplated killing anybody over this. But, I can see where combining this attitude with some extraordinarily bad parenting, some kids with real emotional problems, and other factors that I'm sure I can't begin to understand, might produce the explosive combination we saw in Colorado.
My oversimplification was, in part, to expose the oversimplification in the other direction that these kids are being exposed to.
What an EXCELLENT message to students! Simply wonderful.
I was thinking as I read the editorial: Almost every successful CEO, inventor, technological innovator in the world... What were they when they were in high school?
You got it: NERDS!
What will the vast majority of those current high school jocks and their empty headed cheerleader girlfriends be 20 years from now?
Al and Peggy Bundy!
Take it from another nerd who's been out of high school for 20 years now. This post is right on the money. High School is not the real world!
But, (and as the Fonz used to say, this is a CRUCIAL but):
ESR has a real knack for summarizing facts that all of us nerds already know, and putting them into language that the pointy-haired suits can understand. He exposes Microsoft horse manure in a way that the suits can relate to.
However he may have gotten it, he has the credibility with those IT managers who make the decisions and might, as a result of some of ESR's writings, replace some of their machine rooms full of God-forsaken NT servers with Linux or *BSD servers.
Whatever you think of the man himself and his personality, we need this kind of credibility with the suits.
As usual, ESR has done an excellent job of refuting some anti-Open Source FUD.
He wrote and excellent summary of the FUD, and then proceeded, in an air tight beautifully researched fashion, to blow the FUD out of the water. ("Blew 'em out th' tub!", as my wife's dad used to say.)
However, Microsoft's credibility is now so deeply in the sewer with ANYONE with even a modicum of real computer literacy nowadays that all one needs to say to refute anything they are behind is say, "The study was paid for by Microsoft" and everyone just goes, "Ah, yes, I see now..." and the story is refuted!
You people just don't get it, do you?
on
Why Kids Kill
·
· Score: 1
Scotland, 1997 Not sure of the exact details of this one, but Tony Blair was speaking about it on television last night
This was a particularly grizzly one.
An adult lunatic with an AK-47 stormed into an elementary school gymnasium full of kindergartners. ALL adults in the gym (3 or 4 people) perished as did several kindergartners.
And, of course, the UK has some of the most restrictive gun ownership laws on planet earth. Those laws didn't stop this guy!
Earlier in this thread, "eyepeepackets" stated that RedHat is primarily a distribution for the "newbe". There is truth in this statement in the sense that RedHat has done an excellent job in making the instalation easy for the uninitiated, but it goes deeper than that.
I started as a Linux "newbe" in 1994 with Slackware because RedHat either didn't exist, or was still small enough that I had not yet heard of them. As an experienced Linux user and developer, I now use RedHat (and buy it from them at $50.00) for the folowing reasons:
1) What's wrong with a painless install for the "experienced" user? I always end up customising the heck out of my instalations later anyway, abandoning RPM's and downloading cutting edge stuff in tarballs, but I like a machine that's essentially "complete" right off the CD.
2) RedHat has contributed more GPL'd code back to the Linux community than probably any other company. This is cool, it's a class act, and I support them for it.
3) RedHat does an excellent job in giving Linux real crediblilty in the commercial world. This is a GOOD THING, so long as they adhere to the principles of Open Source software, which they do.
For these reasons, and others, every 6 months or so when RedHat releases a new distribution, I willingly shell out $50.00 for the official copy. I'm well aware that I could pick it up for $2 or so from cheapbytes or other places, but I'm willing to support, in this little way, the good that RedHat is doing for the free software community.
Of course, with SCO's tech support system, YOU pay for a support instance even when the response is, "Gee, looks like you've uncovered a bug in our system. Maybe we'll have it fixed in the next release."
In 1994, I was programming SCO systems at work, we were an SCO shop.
Early in 1994, I read an article stating that Linux 1.0 had been released, the first "stable" release.
I had heard little things about Linux, and decided that it was time I checked it out.
I got myself a Slackware distribution and installed it on my home PC.
Having been the veteran of already 5 or 6 SCO installs at the time, my first impression was of how simple the install was. I had a working system in a half hour or so. I was particularly impressed with the fact that this thing had installed from my proprietary interface Mitsumi CDROM drive, all the commercial UNIX's at the time required a SCSI CDROM. I had PPP and X working after a couple of evenings of fiddling with the system. Much easier than SCO and most impressive!
Remember, this was 1994. After a little experience with my home Linux box, it became apparent to me that there was NOTHING we were doing at work with SCO that we couldn't also do with Linux. We would have to replace some commercial apps we were using with SCO with freeware equivalents, but clearly the functionality was there.
I floated a few trial balloons at work about migrating from SCO to Linux. I work for a pretty good employer, they were met with some interest.
The first Linux box we set up at work was a little server built out of discarded parts for the purpose of letting SCO developers run Netscape Navigator on their desktops. You see, in 1994 and 1995, there was still not a port of Netscape to SCO. We ran Navigator on the Linux box and displayed the display on the SCO desktop, it worked great, we called this machine our "Netscape Server", even though, of course, it was not running the software, "Netscape Server", but was "serving" netscape client sessions to the SCO developers!
Long story short: by early 1996 we had migrated completely from SCO to Linux for our application (a factory automation system) and there's been no looking back.
SCO is the least stable, least intuitive, hardest to configure, hardest to scale, crashingest, and buggiest of the commercial UNIX distributions. Linux kicked its but in 1993 and does so even more today.
Mr. Michels' comments are transparently the remarks of a CEO who's company is in it's death throws and needs a scapegoat to blame.
But, they truly have no one to blame for their situation but themselves.
I've many times seen a Windows 95/98/NT machine hosed by what should have been a trivial application instalation.
Windows is simply unstable and fragile as all-get-out!
Once you get a Linux box configured the way you want it, it's virtually bullet proof, swapping or upgrading hardware is almost always less painfull with Linux too.
I simply ask a Microsoft worshipper, "when you call Microsoft for tech-support, how often are you satisfied with the result?"
Of course, the answer is never better than "seldom", and is typcially "never."
However, big names like HP offering Linux 24/7 support is a good thing for Linux acceptance.
A 24/7 support system is a mandatory feature in the minds of many (heck, most) pointy-haired manager types, even if the people actually having to keep the systems running know the 24/7 support is worthless or nearly so.
24/7 from "big" names like HP will help Linux get accepted by the pointy-hairs. No doubt about it.
Remember, IS managers don't care about Open Source, or proprietary systems, or monopoly, or The Right Thing. They care about reliability, scalability, data integrity, and uptime.
Which means the LAST products they should consider using are any OS products from Microsoft!
It all comes down to image and marketing, not reality.
And, I agree, for HP to put a commitment behind Linux is fantastic for Linux's image in the mind of the typical IS manager.
Take a look at advertisements for programmers in the classifieds sometime. Probably 60-70 percent of them list "Microsoft Certified" as a job requirement.
Frankly, my experience is that "Microsoft Certified" isn't worth the paper it was written on. Don't get me wrong, I've known some excellent programmers that were Microsoft Certified, but they only got the certification because they needed it to make an employer happy. They felt it was a silly waste of time, themselves.
It seems that the more cluless IT managers see " certified" as a mandatory requirement.
If the existance and availability of programmers and sysadmins who are "Red Hat Certified" can convince a few of these clueless IT managers to replace some of their god-forsaken NT servers with Linux boxes since it gives Linux some creadibility in their pointy-haired corporite minds than I'm all for it!
I liked the suggestion that someone made elsewere of establishing a more generic Linux certification program, perhaps the major distribution companies doing it as a joint venture. This takes the petty distribution feudes out of it.
I feel a little squeamish about Ralph Nader jumping on the Open Source bandwagon. I'm not wild about such a highly controversal figure starting to loudly declare his support for Linux and Open Source. (This is probably the first time I've been in agreement with ANYTHING Nader has said.)
I live in Louisiana, home of David Duke. Anytime David Duke announces support of some political candidate, the candidate will immeidately issue a statement that he DOESN'T WANT David Duke's support! "Go away David Duke! Go endorse my opponent!" is the typical reaction. I sort of feel the same way about Nader's support of Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I could be wrong, but I'm betting it's NOT a spoof.
I've been exposed to several examples of extreme fundamentalist religious fanaticism that were every bit this ludicrous.
Check out the homepage of the group that takes credit for creating the site.
Sadly, it looks like a legit ultra-fundamentalist group.
The wording and syntax of their rhetoric is exactly like that of other such groups I have seen. I saw no blatant giveaways that it was a spoof, even in the "spork" page.
Actually, I HOPE I'm wrong about this...
On a sort-of related note regarding arguing for Linux on a single task by single task basis...
One thing I've found about many people is that the most effective way to persuade them to do something is to convince them that it was *their* idea. This technique can be used on managers, customers, whoever you want to
persuade toward a particular conclusion. Present them with facts and figures without any emotion or interjecting of ones own opinions whatsoever and let them reach the desired conclusion on their own.
This is a VERY subtle skill. One that I am not that good at. I've seen a rare few individuals who are masters at it.
This sort of persuasion is beginning to be seen from the Linux community.
How?
By the fact that "mainstream" press is starting to publish numerous pro-linux articles. Publications considered credible by non-technical management types (who nevertheless make technical decisions in all too many companies) are painting Linux in a positive light.
While this article is still too geeky (Linux vs. GNU/Linux flamewar reference), too long winded and rambly, and too laden with errors ("Linux does not support Plug and Play", puhLEEEZE!) to show to the non-technical pointy haired management type yet, it has a lot of the right stuff that they need to know buried in it.
An executive summary that condensed it into a more concise form, and stripped out the geekiness and the errors would be an excellent article for a manager's summary.
Now, to get one written and published in a publication with credibility in management...
Each of the OS's you mentioned are superior in almost every respect to Windows.
The ideal OS, indeed the OS that would be best for the good of computing for the whole planet is one thats: 1) Open Source, so that those who need to can modify it, and 2) Solid and reliable.
There is room in the world for several such OS's to co-exist and compliment each other.
Competition and openness in this market is a good thing and drives overall improvement.
I agree that ESR's 750 million figure for Linux alone is insanely high and unrealistic.
I do believe, however, that Open Source software is the wave of the future. It's already well on its way to establishing itself as such.
To me, the ideal OS is one that is open and hackable for the programmers who want to hack it, yet is completely anonymous to the non-hacker user.
That is, to the non-hacker, the OS should be easy to set up and configure, then he can just forget about it. It runs solidly with little maintenance.
It should be like the firmware in a VCR. Nobody knows or cares who wrote the code in a VCR. If it works as advertised we just transparently use it and everyone's happy.
I think open source OS's have the greatest chance of achieving this. They are driven by the needs of the people who use them, and clearly, they are the most robust OS's in terms of reliability and resistance to crashing.
I mentioned that the OS should be anonymous. For the non-hacker, it should do its job quietly with minimal fanfare. Windows is the antithesis of this. That stinkin' flying windows logo, or other distinctly MicroSoft icons are in your face with virtually every click of the mouse! And they say open source developers have big egos!
I think this aspect of Linux, will eventually be a huge part of its appeal to a large market.
This is the second or third time I'm aware of that CNN reprinted a pro-linux article from a Linux orented publication. (In this case Linux World.)
Although you would expect anything Linux World wrote about Linux to be pro-linux (DUH!), the fact that CNN is reprinting these pro-Linux articles indicates that we have a Linux advocate within their ranks.
Having a main stream news outlet that has at least one Linux advocate reporter, who obviously isn't fooled by MS FUD, is a wonderful thing for the Linux community.
The majority of main stream media reports about Linux run from the "It's user interface wasn't identical to Windows so the verdict is: 'it's too hard to use'", all the way to regurgitated MicroSoft FUD.
This is nice to see.
Thanks CNN!
Here he goes again...
... take Linux technology with a lot less value added, and
I just roll my eyes at this guy...
>Companies like Red Hat
>they package it up and say, "Hey, this is better than SCO." Well, it isn't. And very
>few customers are buying that story.
>
Actually, they don't have to buy the story, they're smart enough to figure
it out for themselves. click here for a little comment I wrote previously about this line of thinking.
>So now we've got some punk young kids who've taken and engineered pieces
>around the Unix [kernel]
I'm a 37 year old former UNIX nerd, who has been programming in UNIX since about 1979, and am now a serious Linux enthusiast. Linux (and other free os's like FreeBSD) are the next wave, the next step in the evolution of the serious OS.
I'll take being called a "punk young kid" by this clueless guy as a compliment.
In 1979 I was a punk kid (and really was a kid) working on an operating system that no one took seriously. In 1979, UNIX: just a toy for a lot of punk kid hackers...
Like I say, a complement, apparently, I'm keeping current!
>A: As far as I'm concerned, it's free R&D. A lot of developers who have always
>preferred Unix are developing on Linux. The last thing in the world I want is some
>cool app and have my customer go, "Oh, God, if I only had Linux, I could get that
>app."
>
SCO users say that every day. That's one reason many of them are abandoning SCO for Linux in droves. Click on the link above, oh what the hell
here it is again, for an example of a "cool app" that took for bloody-ever to be ported to SCO.
Linux is not cutting DEEPLY into SCO's market because of slick advertising and empty hype. It's cutting into their market share because it is the operating system designed by the end users for the end users, like UNIX used to be. People are switching from SCO to Linux in huge waves because Linux works better.
>Another thing is reliability. It takes millions of dollars to run [reliability] tests. It takes
>expensive people, expensive labs, expensive [electric] bills, racks and racks of
>hardware, and really boring, hard, grubby work. It isn't stuff that people do for fun at
>home with volunteers.
>
Exactly!
This point proves that the primary reason people are switching to Linux is not to save a buck up front, but because Linux has the much lower total cost of ownership over the long haul.
As a former SCO developer, I know this to be true.
You are absolutely correct, of course.
I was pigeonholing and oversimplifying to make a point.
When I was in high school, I was a straight-A student, creative, and quiet.
I was NOT socially inept, IMHO. To the contrary, I had quite a few good friends, (some of whom are still good friends, even though we all live in different states) and attended many school social functions. However, I had little or no interest in sports.
However, the administration of the school, yes the ADMINISTRATION, more than the students, put out the message: "If you aren't a jock, you're weird and you're a failure."
Of course, neither I nor my friends ever remotely contemplated killing anybody over this. But, I can see where combining this attitude with some extraordinarily bad parenting, some kids with real emotional problems, and other factors that I'm sure I can't begin to understand, might produce the explosive combination we saw in Colorado.
My oversimplification was, in part, to expose the oversimplification in the other direction that these kids are being exposed to.
What an EXCELLENT message to students! Simply wonderful.
I was thinking as I read the editorial: Almost every successful CEO, inventor, technological innovator in the world... What were they when they were in high school?
You got it: NERDS!
What will the vast majority of those current high school jocks and their empty headed cheerleader girlfriends be 20 years from now?
Al and Peggy Bundy!
Take it from another nerd who's been out of high school for 20 years now. This post is right on the money. High School is not the real world!
You may not like ESR's style.
You may have problems with his personality.
Frankly, I share some of your sentiments.
But, (and as the Fonz used to say, this is a CRUCIAL but):
ESR has a real knack for summarizing facts that all of us nerds already know, and putting them into language that the pointy-haired suits can understand. He exposes Microsoft horse manure in a way that the suits can relate to.
However he may have gotten it, he has the credibility with those IT managers who make the decisions and might, as a result of some of ESR's writings, replace some of their machine rooms full of God-forsaken NT servers with Linux or *BSD servers.
Whatever you think of the man himself and his personality, we need this kind of credibility with the suits.
As usual, ESR has done an excellent job of refuting some anti-Open Source FUD.
He wrote and excellent summary of the FUD, and then proceeded, in an air tight beautifully researched fashion, to blow the FUD out of the water. ("Blew 'em out th' tub!", as my wife's dad used to say.)
However, Microsoft's credibility is now so deeply in the sewer with ANYONE with even a modicum of real computer literacy nowadays that all one needs to say to refute anything they are behind is say, "The study was paid for by Microsoft" and everyone just goes, "Ah, yes, I see now..." and the story is refuted!
Scotland, 1997 Not sure of the exact details of this one, but Tony Blair was speaking about it on television last night
This was a particularly grizzly one.
An adult lunatic with an AK-47 stormed into an elementary school gymnasium full of kindergartners. ALL adults in the gym (3 or 4 people) perished as did several kindergartners.
And, of course, the UK has some of the most restrictive gun ownership laws on planet earth. Those laws didn't stop this guy!
I'll second all that!
Earlier in this thread, "eyepeepackets" stated that RedHat is primarily a distribution for the "newbe". There is truth in this statement in the sense that RedHat has done an excellent job in making the instalation easy for the uninitiated, but it goes deeper than that.
I started as a Linux "newbe" in 1994 with Slackware because RedHat either didn't exist, or was still small enough that I had not yet heard of them. As an experienced Linux user and developer, I now use RedHat (and buy it from them at $50.00) for the folowing reasons:
1) What's wrong with a painless install for the "experienced" user? I always end up customising the heck out of my instalations later anyway, abandoning RPM's and downloading cutting edge stuff in tarballs, but I like a machine that's essentially "complete" right off the CD.
2) RedHat has contributed more GPL'd code back to the Linux community than probably any other company. This is cool, it's a class act, and I support them for it.
3) RedHat does an excellent job in giving Linux real crediblilty in the commercial world. This is a GOOD THING, so long as they adhere to the principles of Open Source software, which they do.
For these reasons, and others, every 6 months or so when RedHat releases a new distribution, I willingly shell out $50.00 for the official copy. I'm well aware that I could pick it up for $2 or so from cheapbytes or other places, but I'm willing to support, in this little way, the good that RedHat is doing for the free software community.
Of course, with SCO's tech support system, YOU pay for a support instance even when the response is, "Gee, looks like you've uncovered a bug in our system. Maybe we'll have it fixed in the next release."
I've experienced this first hand.
BAH!
Yes, there is one.
It's called the ibcs2 module.
I'm not sure how current it is. It may only successfully emulate older SVR3 based versions of SCO Unix.
In 1994, I was programming SCO systems at work, we were an SCO shop.
Early in 1994, I read an article stating that Linux 1.0 had been released, the first "stable" release.
I had heard little things about Linux, and decided that it was time I checked it out.
I got myself a Slackware distribution and installed it on my home PC.
Having been the veteran of already 5 or 6 SCO installs at the time, my first impression was of how simple the install was. I had a working system in a half hour or so. I was particularly impressed with the fact that this thing had installed from my proprietary interface Mitsumi CDROM drive, all the commercial UNIX's at the time required a SCSI CDROM. I had PPP and X working after a couple of evenings of fiddling with the system. Much easier than SCO and most impressive!
Remember, this was 1994. After a little experience with my home Linux box, it became apparent to me that there was NOTHING we were doing at work with SCO that we couldn't also do with Linux. We would have to replace some commercial apps we were using with SCO with freeware equivalents, but clearly the functionality was there.
I floated a few trial balloons at work about migrating from SCO to Linux. I work for a pretty good employer, they were met with some interest.
The first Linux box we set up at work was a little server built out of discarded parts for the purpose of letting SCO developers run Netscape Navigator on their desktops. You see, in 1994 and 1995, there was still not a port of Netscape to SCO. We ran Navigator on the Linux box and displayed the display on the SCO desktop, it worked great, we called this machine our "Netscape Server", even though, of course, it was not running the software, "Netscape Server", but was "serving" netscape client sessions to the SCO developers!
Long story short: by early 1996 we had migrated completely from SCO to Linux for our application (a factory automation system) and there's been no looking back.
SCO is the least stable, least intuitive, hardest to configure, hardest to scale, crashingest, and buggiest of the commercial UNIX distributions. Linux kicked its but in 1993 and does so even more today.
Mr. Michels' comments are transparently the remarks of a CEO who's company is in it's death throws and needs a scapegoat to blame.
But, they truly have no one to blame for their situation but themselves.
I certianly agree with this!
I've many times seen a Windows 95/98/NT machine hosed by what should have been a trivial application instalation.
Windows is simply unstable and fragile as all-get-out!
Once you get a Linux box configured the way you want it, it's virtually bullet proof, swapping or upgrading hardware is almost always less painfull with Linux too.
My question's answered.
It's fixed now.
Just a stupid observation:
This seems to be a Linux story (yes, I read the story that was linked), yet it's flagged with the "Bill-the-Borg" icon.
Shouldn't this be a penquin Icon story?
I've been doing this kind of thing for years.
I simply ask a Microsoft worshipper, "when you call Microsoft for tech-support, how often are you satisfied with the result?"
Of course, the answer is never better than "seldom", and is typcially "never."
However, big names like HP offering Linux 24/7 support is a good thing for Linux acceptance.
A 24/7 support system is a mandatory feature in the minds of many (heck, most) pointy-haired manager types, even if the people actually having to keep the systems running know the 24/7 support is worthless or nearly so.
24/7 from "big" names like HP will help Linux get accepted by the pointy-hairs. No doubt about it.
Remember, IS managers don't care about Open Source, or proprietary systems, or monopoly, or The Right Thing. They care about reliability, scalability, data integrity, and uptime.
Which means the LAST products they should consider using are any OS products from Microsoft!
It all comes down to image and marketing, not reality.
And, I agree, for HP to put a commitment behind Linux is fantastic for Linux's image in the mind of the typical IS manager.
Frankly, my experience is that "Microsoft Certified" isn't worth the paper it was written on. Don't get me wrong, I've known some excellent programmers that were Microsoft Certified, but they only got the certification because they needed it to make an employer happy. They felt it was a silly waste of time, themselves.
It seems that the more cluless IT managers see " certified" as a mandatory requirement.
If the existance and availability of programmers and sysadmins who are "Red Hat Certified" can convince a few of these clueless IT managers to replace some of their god-forsaken NT servers with Linux boxes since it gives Linux some creadibility in their pointy-haired corporite minds than I'm all for it!
I liked the suggestion that someone made elsewere of establishing a more generic Linux certification program, perhaps the major distribution companies doing it as a joint venture. This takes the petty distribution feudes out of it.
The article stated that FreeBSD people tend to be in their 30's whereas Linux people tend to be in their teens and 20's.
I'm a 37 year old Linux nerd. (Was a SysV nerd for many years before Linux existed.)
Does this make me immature or progressive?
;-)
I feel a little squeamish about Ralph Nader jumping on the Open Source bandwagon. I'm not wild about such a highly controversal figure starting to loudly declare his support for Linux and Open Source. (This is probably the first time I've been in agreement with ANYTHING Nader has said.)
I live in Louisiana, home of David Duke. Anytime David Duke announces support of some political candidate, the candidate will immeidately issue a statement that he DOESN'T WANT David Duke's support! "Go away David Duke! Go endorse my opponent!" is the typical reaction. I sort of feel the same way about Nader's support of Linux.
If Open Source is a "temporary phenomenon", then so is the internet.
For a far more eloquent rebuttal to exactly this kind of thinking, click here.
As far as I can tell, the only purpose it served was to give sex-deprived geeks some hot chicks to gawk at.
HEY!
Some of us resemble that remark!
(It's almost miller time and I'm giddy.)
(Make that Abita Purple Haze time!)