Qemu is pretty good for this. It's free, amd (relatively) fast. http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
Thanks for the link, I'll check this out -
Hmm, Fabrice Bellard... that name rings a bell, way back from my msdos days... (peruses the bellard.org website) AHA! That's the very same Fabrice Bellard who wrote that gem of a program called lzexe - That just made my day, finding that Mr Bellard has come over to the light side of the force:)
"Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively".
okely dokely, I don't really have much interest in "running Linux on microsoft windows natively"... What would be cool though, is something that would work the other way around...
It would be very handy at present if I could, in my linux desktop environment, say, fire up a microsoft windows environment strictly as a handler for whatever odd legacy windows program I might want to run.
I'd want to be able to shut it down completely when the microsoft application has finished, such that the microsoft environment is neither using any resources, nor resident in memory, but could be started again if I needed to run some other legacy ms windows application.
Linux users - you need to type a special command due to the super secret nature of the passwords and the fact the companies don't want us sending them to you - unzip the file then type "make"..."
LOL, you really think Aunt Mildred is going to do all that? No, she'll tell her nephew Jason "I don't understand what they are telling me to do", and Jason will take one look at it and tell her it's a stupid scam, and just to delete it.
So, lotsa luck, you go ahead and try to spread a worm through linux. But let's face facts, while it's trivial to spread a windows worm, it's so damn much work, with so little chance of success, trying to bypass security on linux, that you'll eventually give up in frustration, having achieved nothing.
The reason that's not possible TODAY is security through obscurity, which isn't something you should be proud to rely upon. The only thing you can prove through that line of argument is that Linux has no significant desktop marketshare.
I don't think you understand what security through obscurity is, and your reasoning is the same old joe sixpack thinking that we've heard before, that linux has a better security record only because it has a smaller user base than microsoft windows. By that same logic, apache should have a horrible security record - and yet, although the apache source code is open to the world, it has both a significantly higher market share, and a better security record than the closed source iis.
The Santy worm -is- a perl script that exploits the hole found in the phpBB software. It copies files to/tmp (Windows doesn't have a/tmp directory, does it?) and then proceeded to spread to other *nix servers using Google to find likely targets - and destroy the contents of the *nix web server. Estimates are that 40,000 *nix servers were infected.
Actually, the webserver id does not have the rights to "destroy the contents of the *nix web server" on any web servers which I have access to (admittedly mostly SUSE, and quite standard). The concept of "least privilege" is an example of the unix way of doing things, and mitigates the damage that can occur when 3rd party applications have security holes like this. While it's possible to set up an insecure application and give it way too many privileges, that's not how the vendors ship the OS, so don't try to pin that on linux.
Even in the unlikely event a Windows web server had perl installed and and was running the phpBB bulletin board software, there is no wget command in Windows, and no/tmp directory.
So the fact that windows lacks common unix facilities somehow becomes a plus? LOL, windows lacks a lot of things, e.g. a standard email facility, but the virus writers quickly got around that by bundling their own smtp engines, thus we have by some estimates 80% of the spam on the internet sent by swarms of worm-ridden windows nt/2k/xp PCs. The lesson there is that lack of features is no guarantee of security!
What is possible with "a quick VBScript" that is not possible with a "a quick Perl script"?
(shrugs) I could spend a lot of time and effort presenting to you the details how unix-like OSes handle security, but how about this: you go ahead and try to whip up a "quick perl script" to spread like wildfire through the linux systems on the net, and report back on your success, OK mr anonymous coward? That frustrating and fruitless effort will be a better education than I could ever give you.
I keep seeing posts here about somebody setting their grandma up to run $DISTRO but nobody will admit then that said grandma might be easily duped into clicking that link in that e-mail to get the latest cookie recipe (or some other nonsense) and woops! there goes a local exploit and now her box is Pwn3d!
This sort of thing is not as easy as you suppose - in the windows world one can write a quick vbscript to cause all sorts of nonsense, but on a unixlike platform such as Linux there would be a considerably higher barrier to the success of such shenanigans.
It sounds like you're saying this isn't such a big disaster because there aren't that many Linux users...and that strikes me as a ridiculous point of view.
I see you've failed to understand my statement. I'm at a loss as to how my meaning could have been contorted from "a potential local exploit isn't going to cause the sorts of internet disasters as we see regularly with windows" into the bizzare statement "hardly anybody uses linux" - (strokes beard thoughtfully). We can put the lie to that sort of thinking by simply considering the apache webserver, it's market share, and security record, compared to the microsoft iis web server, it's market share and it's security record. And by "security record", I don't mean "counting the number of advisories from all linux vendors and comparing them to the number of advisories from microsoft", which is a meaningless comparison. No, I mean "compare the frequency, scope and severity of the security incidents associated with the two platforms", which would be much more telling.
All that this needs is to be combined with a vulnerability that grants remote access to a machine and you have a serious problem (provided that the remote access allows them to exploit this).
- and if we had some ham, we could make ham and eggs, if we had some eggs... seriously, we could play "what if" games all day long, but let's not blow this issue all out of proportion. It is what it is and nothing more, and at the end of the day it will have resulted in none of the sort of disasters we see on a regular basis with the microsoft platform...
None of my x86 based systems came with windows... Oh, I guess that's because I didn't buy them pre-made from Best Buy
Neither do I buy "x86 systems" per se - I purchase building blocks, and assemble my own systems. Microsoft never enters the picture for me, but lets' face it, when Joe 6-pack goes to kmart to buy a computer, he's stuck with microsoft windows, and is given no hint that he has any choice in the matter.
Putting "uptime" and "game" together in the same sentence shows that you really are missing the point. For a personal system running a browser, email, and maybe a game or two, uptime is as relevant as weather is to a fish. (IE: relevant in only the most abstract, indrect sort of way)
Nah, there are those of us wo hate to reboot, it offends our sensibilities. It's a unix thing, you wouldn't understand. You think like a user of a peecee, which is why you don't get the point.
As far as power, modern hardware can actually be pretty efficient - My main workstation uses less power in a day than my wife uses running her hair dryer for 15 minutes.
But #1. Many people I encounter who do run strictly Linux on their PCs do so because of a lack of funds. These are the guys who like Linux because they're still able to eeek some life out of their old Pentium 1's and even the old 486DX that they turned into a print server box. They're not exactly a "prime market" for selling commercial games!
That's not true of any of the linux users I know -we are all gainfully employed professionals with money to spend, we go to computer shows to buy all the latest cool hardware, and run linux because it gives us the least grief of any OS we've seen. A lot of us are unix sys admins in our day jobs.
Re: cost - since every new x86 box comes with windows, the path of least resistance (and least initial cost) is to simply stay with ms windows. Not sure where lack of funds would have anything to do with nuking windows and converting the pc into a full blown linux system, which is an additional expense, but obviously worth it.
while most people that use linux and are even half interested in gaming at all at least dual boot into windows, so a linux version doesn't give extra buyers
Nope. I'm a linux user, and an avid gamer (ut2000/2003/2004, q3a, RtCW, doom3 etc), but I don't dual boot, and don't even have a windowspeecee among my half dozen computers. I do pull out the wallet and buy linux games. So, a linux version is most definitely going to yield additional buyers, and I seriously doubt I'm the only one who runs linux 24/7...
Why ruin my uptime just for a game? If there's no linux version of a game, I don't buy the game, end of story. There's already more native linux games available than I can ever hope to find time to play, so if having fewer titles available for linux than for ms windows is my biggest problem, life is good.
And I'm not being trollish. Let's at least accept the fact that when you're in a biased community like Slashdot you're going to see things with a heavy slant. Joe Sixpack STILL hasn't embraced open source,
LOL, you're missing the point - slashdot IS joe sixpack. The bias we are seeing is summed up in the sort of comments you made above. What, you think slashdot is some sort of linux community? Nah, look around, slashdotters are for the most part microsoft windows users.
If you're doing Real Time work, wouldn't it be better to use a proper Real Time OS, such as VxWorks or QNX? Why would you choose Linux?
That's easy, you choose linux if you aleady know it, want the best bang for the buck and don't feel like learning yet another OS programming paradigm for no good reason.
Re:IMHO, none of that matters to the typical end u
on
What's Wrong with Unix?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Development for apps for "all" linuxs is right out, which means big commercial closed source players aren't interested, which in turn means we have to keep Windows machines around to get some kinds of work done, which sucks.
Actually there are a number of examples which put the lie to your charge, apart from the obvious case where a linux admin doesn't even install a GUI. (linux gives you that flexibility) But a number of commercial vendors provide programs which run on any modern linux distro with X windows, e.g. netscape - but in practical terms, any modern linux distro ships with both qt and gtk apps. So any app built on either native xlib, qt or gtk will run on any modern linux system.
Linux has a pretty poor cache and swap system, combined with zero user level control over cache and swap. As a result, over time, the OS runs slower, and s l o w e r and s... l.... o..... w...... r....... until you restart, and then it's back to being fairly snappy until it fills up memory again with things it shouldn't be caching,
LOL, mod parent up funny - linux memory management is actually pretty decent. I don't buy into the hype about running slower and slower and finally needing a reboot, that sounds like too much microsoft thinking. Our mail servers which are currently on a 700+ day uptime are processing messages just as fast as they were when first booted.
Both are about creating and/or enforcing laws that uphold intellectual property. When it concerns the GPL, people here are for them When it concerns downloading copyrighted music, people here are against them. That is how other people are connecting them, but supporting one and opposing the other when I feel the underlying principals are the same.
I think many are just confused and want free beer, it's all the same to them - but nowhere in the GPL does it suggest that one use any inappropriate means to build one's music collection.
I do see a lot of music dowloading by windows users, who by the way are often running stolen copies of windows anyway, while ironically, all the linux users I know respect copyright (including the GPL) and buy their music.
This is/. Anything related to MS is not well-recieved.
Har har, good one, but try again: This is slashdot, where most of the audience are microsoft windows users. Looking over the posts so far, I see a fair amount of comments from microsoft fans fans chiming in with all the reasons to standardize on dot net...
FWIW, I work for a major (and I do mean major) automotive manufacturer, and they've recently decided (and announced to the IT staff) that the architectural direction for all future enterprise apps is to be j2ee, and not.net. They do not decide these things lightly, folks.
It's a fact that microsoft has been caught red-handed on a number of occasions, attempting to manipulate opinion through hired advocates, for instance hiring marketers to pretend to be "outraged citizens" writing to their political representatives to demand that they "lay off microsoft" and look the other way while the monopolists engage in their dirty dealings.
There are also documented cases where microsoft employees were directed to spam online polls to make microsoft products look good - and back in the glory days of usenet, I knew of microsoft employees whose full time job it was to troll the linux newsgroups.
Slashdot? who knows. It certainly wouldn't surprise me...
On that story, everyone's claiming that downloading movies is morally right and not stealing. Now this story has people writing about how the GPL is all warm and fuzzy... Alright, isn't this a little hypocritical?
I suspect you are more than a little confused about the GPL, based on your question - or maybe you're trolling, I don't know. OK, I'll play along: What possible connection can you see between the GPL and stealing music? One is about protection of intellectual property, the other is about stealing.
Stop flaming Microsoft based on their OS of 6 years ago. It only makes you look stupid.
Perhaps they've seen it personally - that doesn't make them stupid, it just means they've experienced something that you ostensibly haven't.
Imagine if MS put out a press release slating OSS based on the 1998 versions of Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. You'd be jumping all over it.
LOL, you don't get it! That's exactly what microsoft, as well as a their accomplices in the press, and astroturfers on places like/. are constantly doing: comparing the linux of 1998 with the microsoft windows of tomorrow.
The API should remain sane so that you could install something from four years ago and still have it work. I can still run Windows 3.1 and 95 applications on my XP laptop. Try running a Linux binary from two years ago.
You're FUDDing about the linux binary API, as I can install the quake 3 arena from 1999 (which I originally ran on redhat 5.2) on my suse 9.2 and it runs perfectly.
As to your windows backwards compatibility, you lose points for dishonesty. I know of quite a few w95/w98 apps that simply crash and burn on 2k/xp - and you claim all windows 3.1 apps run fine on xp?
I don't know who is getting all of this "Linux money", but it certainly isn't affecting the projects I care about.
As always, the money goes to the entrepeneurs. Forget about your favorite projects, if you want to see the money from linux, you need to create something of value to those who have money to spend. I do it by upgrading small and medium businesses to linux and becoming their permanent linux guy, you might do it by writing the killer linux program that small business wants.
One thing ought to be crystal clear at this point, however, even to the most challenged of us - and that is, there is a lot of money to be made in connection with this whole linux thing if you keep your skills sharp, and your eyes open.
Take note, mcses who consider themselves linux savvy because they managed to install redhat inside vmware on their windows pc 2 years ago and learned how to type "ps -ef" just aren't going to cut it. The demand out there is for the real deal, genuine linux talent, which can be earned by anyone willing to work hard and apply themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Qemu is pretty good for this. It's free, amd (relatively) fast. http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
:)
Thanks for the link, I'll check this out -
Hmm, Fabrice Bellard... that name rings a bell, way back from my msdos days... (peruses the bellard.org website) AHA! That's the very same Fabrice Bellard who wrote that gem of a program called lzexe - That just made my day, finding that Mr Bellard has come over to the light side of the force
(Or, rather, you want a version of Wine from far in the future when it works a lot better)
Yes, what you said...
"Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively".
okely dokely, I don't really have much interest in "running Linux on microsoft windows natively"... What would be cool though, is something that would work the other way around...
It would be very handy at present if I could, in my linux desktop environment, say, fire up a microsoft windows environment strictly as a handler for whatever odd legacy windows program I might want to run.
I'd want to be able to shut it down completely when the microsoft application has finished, such that the microsoft environment is neither using any resources, nor resident in memory, but could be started again if I needed to run some other legacy ms windows application.
Linux users - you need to type a special command due to the super secret nature of the passwords and the fact the companies don't want us sending them to you - unzip the file then type "make"..."
LOL, you really think Aunt Mildred is going to do all that? No, she'll tell her nephew Jason "I don't understand what they are telling me to do", and Jason will take one look at it and tell her it's a stupid scam, and just to delete it.
So, lotsa luck, you go ahead and try to spread a worm through linux. But let's face facts, while it's trivial to spread a windows worm, it's so damn much work, with so little chance of success, trying to bypass security on linux, that you'll eventually give up in frustration, having achieved nothing.
That's really cool, but it's a write-only backup...
For some strange reason, most of Slashdot doesn't understand the idea that having both Linux and Windows around
LOL. nice troll, but try again:
"most of slashdot" are just like you: a microsoft windows user, who may have heard about linux...
The reason that's not possible TODAY is security through obscurity, which isn't something you should be proud to rely upon. The only thing you can prove through that line of argument is that Linux has no significant desktop marketshare.
I don't think you understand what security through obscurity is, and your reasoning is the same old joe sixpack thinking that we've heard before, that linux has a better security record only because it has a smaller user base than microsoft windows. By that same logic, apache should have a horrible security record - and yet, although the apache source code is open to the world, it has both a significantly higher market share, and a better security record than the closed source iis.
The Santy worm -is- a perl script that exploits the hole found in the phpBB software. It copies files to /tmp (Windows doesn't have a /tmp directory, does it?) and then proceeded to spread to other *nix servers using Google to find likely targets - and destroy the contents of the *nix web server. Estimates are that 40,000 *nix servers were infected.
/tmp directory.
Actually, the webserver id does not have the rights to "destroy the contents of the *nix web server" on any web servers which I have access to (admittedly mostly SUSE, and quite standard). The concept of "least privilege" is an example of the unix way of doing things, and mitigates the damage that can occur when 3rd party applications have security holes like this. While it's possible to set up an insecure application and give it way too many privileges, that's not how the vendors ship the OS, so don't try to pin that on linux.
Even in the unlikely event a Windows web server had perl installed and and was running the phpBB bulletin board software, there is no wget command in Windows, and no
So the fact that windows lacks common unix facilities somehow becomes a plus? LOL, windows lacks a lot of things, e.g. a standard email facility, but the virus writers quickly got around that by bundling their own smtp engines, thus we have by some estimates 80% of the spam on the internet sent by swarms of worm-ridden windows nt/2k/xp PCs. The lesson there is that lack of features is no guarantee of security!
What is possible with "a quick VBScript" that is not possible with a "a quick Perl script"?
(shrugs) I could spend a lot of time and effort presenting to you the details how unix-like OSes handle security, but how about this: you go ahead and try to whip up a "quick perl script" to spread like wildfire through the linux systems on the net, and report back on your success, OK mr anonymous coward? That frustrating and fruitless effort will be a better education than I could ever give you.
I keep seeing posts here about somebody setting their grandma up to run $DISTRO but nobody will admit then that said grandma might be easily duped into clicking that link in that e-mail to get the latest cookie recipe (or some other nonsense) and woops! there goes a local exploit and now her box is Pwn3d!
This sort of thing is not as easy as you suppose - in the windows world one can write a quick vbscript to cause all sorts of nonsense, but on a unixlike platform such as Linux there would be a considerably higher barrier to the success of such shenanigans.
It sounds like you're saying this isn't such a big disaster because there aren't that many Linux users...and that strikes me as a ridiculous point of view.
I see you've failed to understand my statement. I'm at a loss as to how my meaning could have been contorted from "a potential local exploit isn't going to cause the sorts of internet disasters as we see regularly with windows" into the bizzare statement "hardly anybody uses linux" - (strokes beard thoughtfully). We can put the lie to that sort of thinking by simply considering the apache webserver, it's market share, and security record, compared to the microsoft iis web server, it's market share and it's security record. And by "security record", I don't mean "counting the number of advisories from all linux vendors and comparing them to the number of advisories from microsoft", which is a meaningless comparison. No, I mean "compare the frequency, scope and severity of the security incidents associated with the two platforms", which would be much more telling.
All that this needs is to be combined with a vulnerability that grants remote access to a machine and you have a serious problem (provided that the remote access allows them to exploit this).
- and if we had some ham, we could make ham and eggs, if we had some eggs... seriously, we could play "what if" games all day long, but let's not blow this issue all out of proportion. It is what it is and nothing more, and at the end of the day it will have resulted in none of the sort of disasters we see on a regular basis with the microsoft platform...
None of my x86 based systems came with windows... Oh, I guess that's because I didn't buy them pre-made from Best Buy
Neither do I buy "x86 systems" per se - I purchase building blocks, and assemble my own systems. Microsoft never enters the picture for me, but lets' face it, when Joe 6-pack goes to kmart to buy a computer, he's stuck with microsoft windows, and is given no hint that he has any choice in the matter.
Putting "uptime" and "game" together in the same sentence shows that you really are missing the point. For a personal system running a browser, email, and maybe a game or two, uptime is as relevant as weather is to a fish. (IE: relevant in only the most abstract, indrect sort of way)
Nah, there are those of us wo hate to reboot, it offends our sensibilities. It's a unix thing, you wouldn't understand. You think like a user of a peecee, which is why you don't get the point.
As far as power, modern hardware can actually be pretty efficient - My main workstation uses less power in a day than my wife uses running her hair dryer for 15 minutes.
But #1. Many people I encounter who do run strictly Linux on their PCs do so because of a lack of funds. These are the guys who like Linux because they're still able to eeek some life out of their old Pentium 1's and even the old 486DX that they turned into a print server box. They're not exactly a "prime market" for selling commercial games!
That's not true of any of the linux users I know -we are all gainfully employed professionals with money to spend, we go to computer shows to buy all the latest cool hardware, and run linux because it gives us the least grief of any OS we've seen. A lot of us are unix sys admins in our day jobs.
Re: cost - since every new x86 box comes with windows, the path of least resistance (and least initial cost) is to simply stay with ms windows. Not sure where lack of funds would have anything to do with nuking windows and converting the pc into a full blown linux system, which is an additional expense, but obviously worth it.
while most people that use linux and are even half interested in gaming at all at least dual boot into windows, so a linux version doesn't give extra buyers
Nope. I'm a linux user, and an avid gamer (ut2000/2003/2004, q3a, RtCW, doom3 etc), but I don't dual boot, and don't even have a windowspeecee among my half dozen computers. I do pull out the wallet and buy linux games. So, a linux version is most definitely going to yield additional buyers, and I seriously doubt I'm the only one who runs linux 24/7...
Why ruin my uptime just for a game? If there's no linux version of a game, I don't buy the game, end of story. There's already more native linux games available than I can ever hope to find time to play, so if having fewer titles available for linux than for ms windows is my biggest problem, life is good.
And I'm not being trollish. Let's at least accept the fact that when you're in a biased community like Slashdot you're going to see things with a heavy slant. Joe Sixpack STILL hasn't embraced open source,
LOL, you're missing the point - slashdot IS joe sixpack. The bias we are seeing is summed up in the sort of comments you made above. What, you think slashdot is some sort of linux community? Nah, look around, slashdotters are for the most part microsoft windows users.
If you're doing Real Time work, wouldn't it be better to use a proper Real Time OS, such as VxWorks or QNX? Why would you choose Linux?
That's easy, you choose linux if you aleady know it, want the best bang for the buck and don't feel like learning yet another OS programming paradigm for no good reason.
Development for apps for "all" linuxs is right out, which means big commercial closed source players aren't interested, which in turn means we have to keep Windows machines around to get some kinds of work done, which sucks.
Actually there are a number of examples which put the lie to your charge, apart from the obvious case where a linux admin doesn't even install a GUI. (linux gives you that flexibility) But a number of commercial vendors provide programs which run on any modern linux distro with X windows, e.g. netscape - but in practical terms, any modern linux distro ships with both qt and gtk apps. So any app built on either native xlib, qt or gtk will run on any modern linux system.
Linux has a pretty poor cache and swap system, combined with zero user level control over cache and swap. As a result, over time, the OS runs slower, and s l o w e r and s... l.... o..... w...... r....... until you restart, and then it's back to being fairly snappy until it fills up memory again with things it shouldn't be caching,
LOL, mod parent up funny - linux memory management is actually pretty decent. I don't buy into the hype about running slower and slower and finally needing a reboot, that sounds like too much microsoft thinking. Our mail servers which are currently on a 700+ day uptime are processing messages just as fast as they were when first booted.
Sorry, your story just doesn't hold up.
Both are about creating and/or enforcing laws that uphold intellectual property. When it concerns the GPL, people here are for them When it concerns downloading copyrighted music, people here are against them. That is how other people are connecting them, but supporting one and opposing the other when I feel the underlying principals are the same.
I think many are just confused and want free beer, it's all the same to them - but nowhere in the GPL does it suggest that one use any inappropriate means to build one's music collection.
I do see a lot of music dowloading by windows users, who by the way are often running stolen copies of windows anyway, while ironically, all the linux users I know respect copyright (including the GPL) and buy their music.
This is /.
.net. They do not decide these things lightly, folks.
Anything related to MS is not well-recieved.
Har har, good one, but try again: This is slashdot, where most of the audience are microsoft windows users. Looking over the posts so far, I see a fair amount of comments from microsoft fans fans chiming in with all the reasons to standardize on dot net...
FWIW, I work for a major (and I do mean major) automotive manufacturer, and they've recently decided (and announced to the IT staff) that the architectural direction for all future enterprise apps is to be j2ee, and not
Oh, no! microsoft doing something naughty?
It's a fact that microsoft has been caught red-handed on a number of occasions, attempting to manipulate opinion through hired advocates, for instance hiring marketers to pretend to be "outraged citizens" writing to their political representatives to demand that they "lay off microsoft" and look the other way while the monopolists engage in their dirty dealings.
There are also documented cases where microsoft employees were directed to spam online polls to make microsoft products look good - and back in the glory days of usenet, I knew of microsoft employees whose full time job it was to troll the linux newsgroups.
Slashdot? who knows. It certainly wouldn't surprise me...
On that story, everyone's claiming that downloading movies is morally right and not stealing. Now this story has people writing about how the GPL is all warm and fuzzy... Alright, isn't this a little hypocritical?
I suspect you are more than a little confused about the GPL, based on your question - or maybe you're trolling, I don't know. OK, I'll play along: What possible connection can you see between the GPL and stealing music? One is about protection of intellectual property, the other is about stealing.
Please explain, we're all ears!
Stop flaming Microsoft based on their OS of 6 years ago. It only makes you look stupid.
/. are constantly doing: comparing the linux of 1998 with the microsoft windows of tomorrow.
Perhaps they've seen it personally - that doesn't make them stupid, it just means they've experienced something that you ostensibly haven't.
Imagine if MS put out a press release slating OSS based on the 1998 versions of Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. You'd be jumping all over it.
LOL, you don't get it! That's exactly what microsoft, as well as a their accomplices in the press, and astroturfers on places like
The API should remain sane so that you could install something from four years ago and still have it work. I can still run Windows 3.1 and 95 applications on my XP laptop. Try running a Linux binary from two years ago.
You're FUDDing about the linux binary API, as I can install the quake 3 arena from 1999 (which I originally ran on redhat 5.2) on my suse 9.2 and it runs perfectly.
As to your windows backwards compatibility, you lose points for dishonesty. I know of quite a few w95/w98 apps that simply crash and burn on 2k/xp - and you claim all windows 3.1 apps run fine on xp?
I call bullshit.
I don't know who is getting all of this "Linux money", but it certainly isn't affecting the projects I care about.
As always, the money goes to the entrepeneurs. Forget about your favorite projects, if you want to see the money from linux, you need to create something of value to those who have money to spend. I do it by upgrading small and medium businesses to linux and becoming their permanent linux guy, you might do it by writing the killer linux program that small business wants.
One thing ought to be crystal clear at this point, however, even to the most challenged of us - and that is, there is a lot of money to be made in connection with this whole linux thing if you keep your skills sharp, and your eyes open.
Take note, mcses who consider themselves linux savvy because they managed to install redhat inside vmware on their windows pc 2 years ago and learned how to type "ps -ef" just aren't going to cut it. The demand out there is for the real deal, genuine linux talent, which can be earned by anyone willing to work hard and apply themselves.