Floppy Disks? What are those? I thought that slot on my computer was to insert my credit card for e-business transactions! No wonder the card worked only once before getting scrambled.
"Apparently, according to reports on bugzilla and on linuxnewbie.internet.com, Red Hat 7.0 is being described by some people as one of the buggiest distros they've seen in recent history."
I heard this article has the most buggiest hyperlinks in recent history. Try clicking on any of them.
I don't know if IBM makes any memory related chips but what if Rambus went after IBM? IBM probably has enough related patents and prior art to kick Rambus into oblivion with countersuits and such.
Since you seem to have gotten autorpm working well, I got one serious question for you... How do you make autorpm only upgrade RPMs which are already installed to their latest version avaiable? I could only get it to download everything that was available...
"So what happens to those of us who like to sometimes reinstall fresh from the
media? We reinstall, and then have to wait for all the updates to be
downloaded all over again. Unless we can save the update.rpm's and write
them onto a copy of our RedHat 7.0 disk in place of the 7.0 files. Now that
would be neat."
I do this all the time with Red Hat installs. There is a 'Red Hat CD making HOWTO' at www.linuxdoc.org which shows you how to merge the latest RPM updates into the original copy of a release and subsequently burn a CD. It is very easy to do this too because that HOWTO has some perl scripts to automate much of the process of merging.
"I am just wonder why they are releasing 7.0 so soon instead of waiting until
linux kernel 2.4 and XFree86 4.x will stabilize more? On the other hand if the
latest kernel 2.4.x and XFree86 4.x are not included, then what is redhat's
excuse for such a major version bump? If all they want is release a few
updates to 6.2 they could just make it "6.3""
If you look at Red Hat's previous release schedules, they always release 2 version every year, once in spring and once in the fall. They used to do it less frequently in the past but people used to complain in their mailing lists that this wasn't frequent enough. As to why they are doing a 7.0 instead of 6.3, it is probably because there were some binary incompatibilities introduced either in the libraries or the compiler. The nice thing about Red Hat is that they continue support for the previous major revision (5.2 right now) in the form of rpm updates for security issues. Most other distributions tend to only care about their current releases afaik.
"It's kinda funny seeing Microsoft and Linux going opposite ways. You can download Win2000 Service Pack 1 for free, but OldHat wants a credit card number before you even start upgrading. It's pure capitalist hypocrisy!"
I thought the idea was to give away the software and charge for the service. The GPL doesn't state that a company not charge for software or provide free cds or ftp servers... just that you don't restrict further redistribution. As such, you can give your copy of a Red Hat cd to somebody else to install or store the rpms on your own ftp server for others to install. You cannot do any of these things with Win200 (atleast not legally)
I wonder if this subscription upgrading stuff has anything to do with RPM 4.0 which just came out. It is not supposed to be fully backward compatible so maybe they added some features which allow for more automated updates?
I think most distributions do make use of ramdisks during install. In particular, it is called 'initrd' or initial rootdisk, to hold all the kernel modules until it can determine which ones are needed.
In my opinion, the problem with RPM is that the documentation is falling behind. The book 'Maximum RPM' is of very good quality but it hasn't been updated since RPM 2.0 days really and so many things have changed or features have been added. For example, the relocatable packaging feature has been greatly improved. Macros and triggers have been added. The latest RPM can do automatic gzip or documentation, strip binaries and do additional checks. All this leads to RPMS of varying quality because they come from various sources, each with differing opinions and standards. If you want to see how bad it is, just use the program 'rpmlint' or a typical RPM package and see all the warnings it gives you.
"All that matters is that SuperApp (the application in this example) is aware of the ID. The copying software and other software doesn't need to know about it for the ID to be effective."
First, the SuperApp will have to store the drive ID number somewhere as part of its installation so it refuses to run anywhere else. Right there, you can runn a 'diff' between two versions of the install to figure out where this id is stored. If that fails, then just write a hacked version of the driver to supply a generic drive ID.
A robots.txt file is used to control web page indexing done by autonomous search engines. It states which search engines are allowed and what they may index. It is somewhat advisory in nature in that a rogue search engine may disregard that information and do what they please but they may suffer the wrath of the owners of that website or others if this is done too often.
"A good example is III-V semiconductors such as Gallium Arsenide. While they are indispensible for lasers and such, they are not used for integrated circuits nearly as much as silicon, because they are so damn expensive."
The other problem with Gallium Arsenide is that it gives you GaAs;-)
All this complaining about usage of GPL code in what... two low key KDE applications... kghostview and kmidi. With all due respects to the kghostview author, it is not very robust either. If those two programs got deleted off the code tree, I don't think I would be greatly inconvenienced. For what little that the KDE people took off others GPL code, I think they easily provided back ten fold to the pool of GPL code. Witness the awesome new HTML viewer in KDE2. The only other browser at par with it is Mozilla. And even the Mozilla people had to bend over backwards to accomodate the GPL (do you see a pattern here?)
Slashdot Mirror
Floppy Disks? What are those? I thought that slot on my computer was to insert my credit card for e-business transactions! No wonder the card worked only once before getting scrambled.
For those who disagree, can they please name an open source company before Cygnus(now Red Hat)?
"Apparently, according to reports on bugzilla and on linuxnewbie.internet.com, Red Hat 7.0 is being described by some people as one of the buggiest distros they've seen in recent history."
I heard this article has the most buggiest hyperlinks in recent history. Try clicking on any of them.And I thought the IRS tax code was complicated!
I don't know if IBM makes any memory related chips but what if Rambus went after IBM? IBM probably has enough related patents and prior art to kick Rambus into oblivion with countersuits and such.
http://www.drbob42.com/kylix/hotshots.htm
"What is this W Windows of which they speak?"
Just search Google under the search term 'W" ;-)
Since you seem to have gotten autorpm working well, I got one serious question for you... How do you make autorpm only upgrade RPMs which are already installed to their latest version avaiable? I could only get it to download everything that was available...
"So what happens to those of us who like to sometimes reinstall fresh from the media? We reinstall, and then have to wait for all the updates to be downloaded all over again. Unless we can save the update .rpm's and write
them onto a copy of our RedHat 7.0 disk in place of the 7.0 files. Now that
would be neat."
I do this all the time with Red Hat installs. There is a 'Red Hat CD making HOWTO' at www.linuxdoc.org which shows you how to merge the latest RPM updates into the original copy of a release and subsequently burn a CD. It is very easy to do this too because that HOWTO has some perl scripts to automate much of the process of merging.
"I am just wonder why they are releasing 7.0 so soon instead of waiting until linux kernel 2.4 and XFree86 4.x will stabilize more? On the other hand if the latest kernel 2.4.x and XFree86 4.x are not included, then what is redhat's excuse for such a major version bump? If all they want is release a few updates to 6.2 they could just make it "6.3""
If you look at Red Hat's previous release schedules, they always release 2 version every year, once in spring and once in the fall. They used to do it less frequently in the past but people used to complain in their mailing lists that this wasn't frequent enough. As to why they are doing a 7.0 instead of 6.3, it is probably because there were some binary incompatibilities introduced either in the libraries or the compiler. The nice thing about Red Hat is that they continue support for the previous major revision (5.2 right now) in the form of rpm updates for security issues. Most other distributions tend to only care about their current releases afaik.
"It's kinda funny seeing Microsoft and Linux going opposite ways. You can download Win2000 Service Pack 1 for free, but OldHat wants a credit card number before you even start upgrading. It's pure capitalist hypocrisy!" I thought the idea was to give away the software and charge for the service. The GPL doesn't state that a company not charge for software or provide free cds or ftp servers... just that you don't restrict further redistribution. As such, you can give your copy of a Red Hat cd to somebody else to install or store the rpms on your own ftp server for others to install. You cannot do any of these things with Win200 (atleast not legally)
"If redhat is the Linux Micosoft what does that make Mandrake???" Sun?
I wonder if this subscription upgrading stuff has anything to do with RPM 4.0 which just came out. It is not supposed to be fully backward compatible so maybe they added some features which allow for more automated updates?
Seriously, I like Slashdot, but the story selection really pisses me off sometimes.
You do know that you can customize your Slashdot account to filter our topics you don't want to see?
I think most distributions do make use of ramdisks during install. In particular, it is called 'initrd' or initial rootdisk, to hold all the kernel modules until it can determine which ones are needed.
In my opinion, the problem with RPM is that the documentation is falling behind. The book 'Maximum RPM' is of very good quality but it hasn't been updated since RPM 2.0 days really and so many things have changed or features have been added. For example, the relocatable packaging feature has been greatly improved. Macros and triggers have been added. The latest RPM can do automatic gzip or documentation, strip binaries and do additional checks. All this leads to RPMS of varying quality because they come from various sources, each with differing opinions and standards. If you want to see how bad it is, just use the program 'rpmlint' or a typical RPM package and see all the warnings it gives you.
"All that matters is that SuperApp (the application in this example) is aware of the ID. The copying software and other software doesn't need to know about it for the ID to be effective."
First, the SuperApp will have to store the drive ID number somewhere as part of its installation so it refuses to run anywhere else. Right there, you can runn a 'diff' between two versions of the install to figure out where this id is stored. If that fails, then just write a hacked version of the driver to supply a generic drive ID.
A robots.txt file is used to control web page indexing done by autonomous search engines. It states which search engines are allowed and what they may index. It is somewhat advisory in nature in that a rogue search engine may disregard that information and do what they please but they may suffer the wrath of the owners of that website or others if this is done too often.
Ignoring any issues related to the Rambus patent case, is there anyone here who thinks RDRAM is (or will be) the techologically superior solution?
"I think we need a new name for it. Perhaps "buckysheet" would do."
How about "buck-naked?"
"A good example is III-V semiconductors such as Gallium Arsenide. While they are indispensible for lasers and such, they are not used for integrated circuits nearly as much as silicon, because they are so damn expensive."
The other problem with Gallium Arsenide is that it gives you GaAs ;-)
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
All this complaining about usage of GPL code in what... two low key KDE applications... kghostview and kmidi. With all due respects to the kghostview author, it is not very robust either. If those two programs got deleted off the code tree, I don't think I would be greatly inconvenienced. For what little that the KDE people took off others GPL code, I think they easily provided back ten fold to the pool of GPL code. Witness the awesome new HTML viewer in KDE2. The only other browser at par with it is Mozilla. And even the Mozilla people had to bend over backwards to accomodate the GPL (do you see a pattern here?)
Can someone enumerate a list of the code from which KDE borrows GPL code? I see people constantly accusing them of this but don't go into specifics...
And we only need to open 3500 accounts on paypal to pay for it (at $5 to open an account plus $5 for referral)