Previously I was a pro-linux; now; i'm just a happy microsoft user.
OK, I'll feed the troll, just for gits and shiggles
Previously I was pro-microsoft; now I'm a very satisfied Linux user. I use Linux for gaming, multimedia, all kinds of programming.
I'm tired of microsoft cheerleading.
Nah, I don't use IE/Outlook/Office, even though I could run them via wine if I really cared. Linux just works for me, and I don't want to spend time futzing around with an expee install for no reason. wine does the trick for windows compatibility, although I much prefer native linux apps.
Sure, Linux can still be improved in some areas (what operating system couldn't?) but to paraphrase the anonymous coward, "heh.. it works; and microsoft has lots of flaws too; ohhh man lots."
In answer to your first question, no, I don't know that it _is_ possible to fully secure a windows peecee, short of pulling the plug - and if assume that your windows peecee is secure, you are quite possibly headed for a rude awakening.
Your other objections are all rather easily answered, and have been discussed in depth elsewhere. I've no desire to convert you to the unix world if you're happy with windows - so take care, and have a nice life.
Nope - I'm running 2.6.11. I didn't compile it. You see, there are entities called "vendors" who do all that stuff for you, so you never have to worry your pretty little head about it. Mind you, I could compile a kernel if I wanted to - but why? There's simply no need, as the modular kernel that my vendor supplies is perfectly suitable for every situation.
I can anticipate your next question: "What if the kernel needs to be updated?" At the risk of repeating myself, there are these entities called "vendors". Our vendor of choice is Novell (nee SuSE). Others use a vendor known as "redhat", while still others may use "mandriva" or "The Debian Project". There are other vendors, but these comprise the lion's share of the market.
In any case, these and other vendors supply a mechanism for updates, and provide complete updated packages through that mechanism. That includes kernels, if the kernel needs an update. So no, I don't compile the kernel, I just click on the button that says "online update" and let the system work for me.
You're running linux and the trailer didn't play for you? I'd be curious to know what distro, what browser etc you are using - FWIW it played fine for me (suse 9.3, mozilla+mplayerplug-in)
It sure is a nasty one. I wrote a procmail recipe to block out.zip files, to no avail... it seems to still slip on thru for some odd reason. As much as I tried to get our server's host to help us curb the problem, they would push their current marketting ploy.
hmm, procmail recipes can be tedious, although you should certainly be able to block zip attachments with the available regular expressions - but we've found (at least if you're lucky enough to be running postfix) it's easy to block specified attachments using mime_header_checks.
Anyone have some proactive suggestions? Would ClamAV prevent this from perpetuating on the server-side?
clamav is a very good solution for this - it is very good about keeping itself up to date, and in addition to normal peecee viruses, it also blocks phishing scams. Definitely recommended.
Number two, if the top 25 people who contribute are doing a hobby part-time, and they're the top 25 people, then what does that say for the rest of the contributors to Linux? There are probably thousands of them.
Oh dear, it sounds as if you've managed to completely misunderstand the few basic points the man made, somehow thinking that he says the exact opposite of what he's actually saying...
Let's get this right, shall we? 90% of the top linux kernel coders are paid for that work by major corporations. Why is that so difficult to grasp?
You're looking at this from the perspective of someone who understands and remembers the differences in a dozen config file formats. Most people don't.
Dozen file formats? um no, only one format, just plain text. And actually he's looking at it from the perspective of someone who can read text files. Making the text files huge and cryptic, humanly speaking, does make it harder for remote administration by humans
Be that as it may, apple is probably more concerned with making it easy to configure all that with a local GUI tool, than they are with any sort of remote administration manageability
I've been running 2.6 since it was beta, and have found it to be more stable than 2.4 - and much snappier for those great 3D FPS games. Come to think of it, our data center contains suse linux servers running the 2.6 kernel and dayum, they are stable!
As for sarge, IIRC it defaults to a 2.4 kernel in typical debian fashion (woody installs an ancient 2.2 kernel, right?) but even debian offers the choice of a 2.6 kernel in sarge.
Unless viable alternatives to monopoly lockin not only continue to exist, but to flourish, the monopolist will use their financial and other resources to persuade application vendors, service providers and agencies to "cut off the air supply" (to use a favorite microsoft term) to those using other than approved microsoft products, thus killing off any alternative user community that is small enough that they feel they can get away with it.
It's not about making everybody use what I use - No, that's the microsoft way, and that's not what we're into - it's about preserving the CHOICE - both mine and yours - to use what works best for us, choosing from apps which we feel best implements officially defined STANDARDS.
It's about a level playing field, based not on monopolies designed to keep one company in power while killing off any potential choice, but an environment in which creativity can flourish, unimpeded by the certain dread that an unchecked and lawless monopolist will smash and smother those deemed creative enough to present a potential threat to the monopoly.
I don't think he was complaining about the size of the kernel, per-se, so much as he's complaining that lots of effort is going into adding new features, and very little effort is going into making the 2.6 kernel stable, reliable, etc.
Again that would be a lack of cluefulness on his part. The kernel is continually being improved, code cleaned up, algorithms being replaced by more efficient ones, locking and synchronization is being fine tuned, so that latency is improved etc - so he has no basis for complaint. If he's saying that users of linux on the desktop should go away and leave linux to Sam Greenblatt and the server room only, that's an incredibly arrogant demand, and it isn't going to happen. Users and developers of linux want great multimedia and gaming peformance, so I'm afraid Mr Greenblat will just have to lump it.
As to your statement about 2.6 being stable, it sounds as though you've misunderstood the sense in which the word "stable" was used. The 2.6 kernel is incredibly stable in operation, more so than any 2.4 kernel I've used - not to mention the better performance in most situations. However, active development continues on 2.6, which remains robust as is gains new features. Vendors are shipping 2.6 systems in their "enterprise" versions, and let me tell you, if 2.6 was not stable, those stuffy european banks would not be using it.
So, it's not at all "stable" in the sense of being finished and unchanging - it's still being improved, and improvement means code changes, like it or not. If you're concerned about change, use your vendors 2.6 kernel, period. Very stable, with respect to changes. However, if you keep downloading the latest kernel version, and installing it on your system, you have nobody but yourself to blame that "the kernel changed" - it didn't change itself.
We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel.'
No offense, but he sounds pretty clueless here - not to mention the fact that there is no "game driver" or "music driver", perhaps he is referring to device drivers and/or low-latency features, which allow for a better gaming/multimedia experience...
In any case, he completely misses the point that the kernel, as shipped by the distros, is modular. That means, if a device isn't present, or isn't used, the driver for that device never gets loaded into memory. So it doesn't really matter how many devices are supported, the only device drivers affecting the size of the kernel are the ones loaded into memory on the machine in question.
I find Greenblat's attitude ridiculous, since he seems to be saying that the kernel developers need to focus on what Sanm Greenblat is interested in, and to hell with people who want to do cool and interesting things with linux, which aren't part of CA's business plan.
I could go on, but that's enough for a first impression.
SuSE is owned by Novell. Look for it to become the 'NetWare' distro.
Yes I know about the acquisition. We are actually already a big edirectory shop and we have Novell reps onsite. Interestingly, they never mention netware or try to push it.
There is a hybrid netware/linux server offering but so far we are mainly interested in the SLES product as we have never been a netware shop.
That's cool, sounds like Yale has got it together. Of all the linux distros I've used, suse is well put-together out of the box, and seems to best capture that old school hp-ux flavor, while very up-to-date and a good performer.
BTW I work for a major auto manufacturer, and linux is slowly creeping into the infrastructure, and starting to take over jobs once held by solaris and hpux boxes. All the new linux servers are suse enterprise v9. The unix admins who've tried suse seem pleasantly surprised at how well put together it is, and how well it performs.
Novell made a bad bet. Red Hat owns business Linux, and let's face facts; paid Linux is a niche market. The main attraction of Linux is that it's free as in beer. When it's all said and done, SuSe would have been better off as an independant company.
From where I sit, Novell's aquisition was right on the money. redhat may have been more popular in the usa, but suse has always been a very solid distro, and always struck me as more solid and finished than redhat.
I have several business clients, all of who were red hat shops, and most of whom are now suse/novell shops. I don't see anybody moving in the other direction.
As for the main attraction of linux, free beer is absolutely irrelevant to the big boys I work with. They buy enterprise linux, and support contracts, and depend on linux to do the job with good performance, high reliability, and no hassles. suse/novell has been delivering, and with all the best of netware and edirectory available in a data center grade linux, I don't see them going anywhere but forward.
In "market" of my household, I run linux, my son runs linux, both daughters have OSX laptops, and my wife runs w2k - I'm seriously thinking of cutting microsoft out of the picture completely and getting my wife a mac, which would make us a 100% unix household. The prospect of complete freedom from worms and viruses is a big incentive, as is the utter coolness of not having to deal with microsoft any longer.
How does flamebait like that get modded as informative? Sure, you can always find extremists if you look, but most Linux users are like me: quite pragmatic, and ready to pull out the wallet to pay for good quality linux products.
The reaction I'm seeing here has been fairly positive, gievn that nero really isn't providing anything I can get very excited about (buy a microsoft windows version I'll never use, in order to get a "free" linux version?) but in general we welcome more vendors to the linux marketplace.
I like k3b, but I'm always willing to check out the alternatives, and hopefully one day I'll be able to buy nero for linux without the useless microsoft baggage.
Saying that Linux is better than Minix because of Minix's simplicity and limited capability is completely missing the point.
No, the point is that Tannenbaum, clever though he may be, was dead wrong about Linux. He said he would have given Torvalds an F on Linux, because it was not written according to Tannenbaum's pet microkernel design. Over a decade later, the jury is in. Linux is of an excellent, practical design, gets the job done remarkably well, and microkernels have _not_ taken the world by storm.
I'm not insulting minix when I call it a toy, because I like toys. Do you like toys? But surely you can admit that in terms of capabilities and sophistication, minix is a toy compared to linux, micro/macro kernel arguments notwithstanding.
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Previously I was a pro-linux; now; i'm just a happy microsoft user.
OK, I'll feed the troll, just for gits and shiggles
Previously I was pro-microsoft; now I'm a very satisfied Linux user. I use Linux for gaming, multimedia, all kinds of programming.
I'm tired of microsoft cheerleading.
Nah, I don't use IE/Outlook/Office, even though I could run them via wine if I really cared. Linux just works for me, and I don't want to spend time futzing around with an expee install for no reason. wine does the trick for windows compatibility, although I much prefer native linux apps.
Sure, Linux can still be improved in some areas (what operating system couldn't?) but to paraphrase the anonymous coward, "heh.. it works; and microsoft has lots of flaws too; ohhh man lots."
In answer to your first question, no, I don't know that it _is_ possible to fully secure a windows peecee, short of pulling the plug - and if assume that your windows peecee is secure, you are quite possibly headed for a rude awakening.
Your other objections are all rather easily answered, and have been discussed in depth elsewhere. I've no desire to convert you to the unix world if you're happy with windows - so take care, and have a nice life.
Nope - I'm running 2.6.11. I didn't compile it. You see, there are entities called "vendors" who do all that stuff for you, so you never have to worry your pretty little head about it. Mind you, I could compile a kernel if I wanted to - but why? There's simply no need, as the modular kernel that my vendor supplies is perfectly suitable for every situation.
I can anticipate your next question: "What if the kernel needs to be updated?" At the risk of repeating myself, there are these entities called "vendors". Our vendor of choice is Novell (nee SuSE). Others use a vendor known as "redhat", while still others may use "mandriva" or "The Debian Project". There are other vendors, but these comprise the lion's share of the market.
In any case, these and other vendors supply a mechanism for updates, and provide complete updated packages through that mechanism. That includes kernels, if the kernel needs an update. So no, I don't compile the kernel, I just click on the button that says "online update" and let the system work for me.
You're running linux and the trailer didn't play for you? I'd be curious to know what distro, what browser etc you are using - FWIW it played fine for me (suse 9.3, mozilla+mplayerplug-in)
I'd hire him. Hell yeah, I like people who can think.
In 12 years of running linux I've never seen any distributor supplied update that required a kernel compile, so the parent is a troll...
It sure is a nasty one. I wrote a procmail recipe to block out .zip files, to no avail... it seems to still slip on thru for some odd reason. As much as I tried to get our server's host to help us curb the problem, they would push their current marketting ploy.
hmm, procmail recipes can be tedious, although you should certainly be able to block zip attachments with the available regular expressions - but we've found (at least if you're lucky enough to be running postfix) it's easy to block specified attachments using mime_header_checks.
Anyone have some proactive suggestions? Would ClamAV prevent this from perpetuating on the server-side?
clamav is a very good solution for this - it is very good about keeping itself up to date, and in addition to normal peecee viruses, it also blocks phishing scams. Definitely recommended.
The difference is, you're just getting probed. The windows users are getting owned.
Number two, if the top 25 people who contribute are doing a hobby part-time, and they're the top 25 people, then what does that say for the rest of the contributors to Linux? There are probably thousands of them.
Oh dear, it sounds as if you've managed to completely misunderstand the few basic points the man made, somehow thinking that he says the exact opposite of what he's actually saying...
Let's get this right, shall we? 90% of the top linux kernel coders are paid for that work by major corporations. Why is that so difficult to grasp?
You're looking at this from the perspective of someone who understands and remembers the differences in a dozen config file formats. Most people don't.
Dozen file formats? um no, only one format, just plain text. And actually he's looking at it from the perspective of someone who can read text files. Making the text files huge and cryptic, humanly speaking, does make it harder for remote administration by humans
Be that as it may, apple is probably more concerned with making it easy to configure all that with a local GUI tool, than they are with any sort of remote administration manageability
I've been running 2.6 since it was beta, and have found it to be more stable than 2.4 - and much snappier for those great 3D FPS games. Come to think of it, our data center contains suse linux servers running the 2.6 kernel and dayum, they are stable!
As for sarge, IIRC it defaults to a 2.4 kernel in typical debian fashion (woody installs an ancient 2.2 kernel, right?) but even debian offers the choice of a 2.6 kernel in sarge.
It's all quite simple really...
Unless viable alternatives to monopoly lockin not only continue to exist, but to flourish, the monopolist will use their financial and other resources to persuade application vendors, service providers and agencies to "cut off the air supply" (to use a favorite microsoft term) to those using other than approved microsoft products, thus killing off any alternative user community that is small enough that they feel they can get away with it.
It's not about making everybody use what I use - No, that's the microsoft way, and that's not what we're into - it's about preserving the CHOICE - both mine and yours - to use what works best for us, choosing from apps which we feel best implements officially defined STANDARDS.
It's about a level playing field, based not on monopolies designed to keep one company in power while killing off any potential choice, but an environment in which creativity can flourish, unimpeded by the certain dread that an unchecked and lawless monopolist will smash and smother those deemed creative enough to present a potential threat to the monopoly.
I don't think he was complaining about the size of the kernel, per-se, so much as he's complaining that lots of effort is going into adding new features, and very little effort is going into making the 2.6 kernel stable, reliable, etc.
Again that would be a lack of cluefulness on his part. The kernel is continually being improved, code cleaned up, algorithms being replaced by more efficient ones, locking and synchronization is being fine tuned, so that latency is improved etc - so he has no basis for complaint. If he's saying that users of linux on the desktop should go away and leave linux to Sam Greenblatt and the server room only, that's an incredibly arrogant demand, and it isn't going to happen. Users and developers of linux want great multimedia and gaming peformance, so I'm afraid Mr Greenblat will just have to lump it.
As to your statement about 2.6 being stable, it sounds as though you've misunderstood the sense in which the word "stable" was used. The 2.6 kernel is incredibly stable in operation, more so than any 2.4 kernel I've used - not to mention the better performance in most situations. However, active development continues on 2.6, which remains robust as is gains new features. Vendors are shipping 2.6 systems in their "enterprise" versions, and let me tell you, if 2.6 was not stable, those stuffy european banks would not be using it.
So, it's not at all "stable" in the sense of being finished and unchanging - it's still being improved, and improvement means code changes, like it or not. If you're concerned about change, use your vendors 2.6 kernel, period. Very stable, with respect to changes. However, if you keep downloading the latest kernel version, and installing it on your system, you have nobody but yourself to blame that "the kernel changed" - it didn't change itself.
We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel.'
No offense, but he sounds pretty clueless here - not to mention the fact that there is no "game driver" or "music driver", perhaps he is referring to device drivers and/or low-latency features, which allow for a better gaming/multimedia experience...
In any case, he completely misses the point that the kernel, as shipped by the distros, is modular. That means, if a device isn't present, or isn't used, the driver for that device never gets loaded into memory. So it doesn't really matter how many devices are supported, the only device drivers affecting the size of the kernel are the ones loaded into memory on the machine in question.
I find Greenblat's attitude ridiculous, since he seems to be saying that the kernel developers need to focus on what Sanm Greenblat is interested in, and to hell with people who want to do cool and interesting things with linux, which aren't part of CA's business plan.
I could go on, but that's enough for a first impression.
SuSE is owned by Novell. Look for it to become the 'NetWare' distro.
Yes I know about the acquisition. We are actually already a big edirectory shop and we have Novell reps onsite. Interestingly, they never mention netware or try to push it.
There is a hybrid netware/linux server offering but so far we are mainly interested in the SLES product as we have never been a netware shop.
Ummm. So what you're getting at is your operation is slowly becoming a Novell shop.
um, no... a linux shop... (shrug)... not doing any netware.
That's cool, sounds like Yale has got it together. Of all the linux distros I've used, suse is well put-together out of the box, and seems to best capture that old school hp-ux flavor, while very up-to-date and a good performer.
BTW I work for a major auto manufacturer, and linux is slowly creeping into the infrastructure, and starting to take over jobs once held by solaris and hpux boxes. All the new linux servers are suse enterprise v9. The unix admins who've tried suse seem pleasantly surprised at how well put together it is, and how well it performs.
what had once been the UNIX lab was full of Dell linux boxes.
What do you mean, "used to be the unix lab"?
Sounds like it still is the unix lab, just a different flavor, and a different hardware platform.
Novell made a bad bet. Red Hat owns business Linux, and let's face facts; paid Linux is a niche market. The main attraction of Linux is that it's free as in beer. When it's all said and done, SuSe would have been better off as an independant company.
From where I sit, Novell's aquisition was right on the money. redhat may have been more popular in the usa, but suse has always been a very solid distro, and always struck me as more solid and finished than redhat.
I have several business clients, all of who were red hat shops, and most of whom are now suse/novell shops. I don't see anybody moving in the other direction.
As for the main attraction of linux, free beer is absolutely irrelevant to the big boys I work with. They buy enterprise linux, and support contracts, and depend on linux to do the job with good performance, high reliability, and no hassles. suse/novell has been delivering, and with all the best of netware and edirectory available in a data center grade linux, I don't see them going anywhere but forward.
In "market" of my household, I run linux, my son runs linux, both daughters have OSX laptops, and my wife runs w2k - I'm seriously thinking of cutting microsoft out of the picture completely and getting my wife a mac, which would make us a 100% unix household. The prospect of complete freedom from worms and viruses is a big incentive, as is the utter coolness of not having to deal with microsoft any longer.
Too bad there is no support for linux - other than the totally obsolete 2.2 kernel. We haven't deployed any linux 2.2 systems in this millennium.
How does flamebait like that get modded as informative? Sure, you can always find extremists if you look, but most Linux users are like me: quite pragmatic, and ready to pull out the wallet to pay for good quality linux products.
The reaction I'm seeing here has been fairly positive, gievn that nero really isn't providing anything I can get very excited about (buy a microsoft windows version I'll never use, in order to get a "free" linux version?) but in general we welcome more vendors to the linux marketplace.
I like k3b, but I'm always willing to check out the alternatives, and hopefully one day I'll be able to buy nero for linux without the useless microsoft baggage.
Saying that Linux is better than Minix because of Minix's simplicity and limited capability is completely missing the point.
No, the point is that Tannenbaum, clever though he may be, was dead wrong about Linux. He said he would have given Torvalds an F on Linux, because it was not written according to Tannenbaum's pet microkernel design. Over a decade later, the jury is in. Linux is of an excellent, practical design, gets the job done remarkably well, and microkernels have _not_ taken the world by storm.
I'm not insulting minix when I call it a toy, because I like toys. Do you like toys? But surely you can admit that in terms of capabilities and sophistication, minix is a toy compared to linux, micro/macro kernel arguments notwithstanding.
Also I am sure Tanenbaum would disagree that Linux is a radically improved version of Minix -- as he is an advocate of microkernels.
Disagree he might, but linux is now deployed in the data centers of fortune 1000 companies worldwide, while minix is still an educational toy.