Here in Silicon Valley, I've had my DSL for about 1.5yrs. When I first signed up, everything was through PacBell, both the line and the ISP. Then a couple months ago I got a letter saying that my DSL service had been taken over by SBC communications. Three weeks after that letter I got another one saying that access to mail servers and newsgroups would be limited to 128k. So it's not really a matter of congestion [other than that's why they are limiting it]. They are really throttling it.
My roommate and I have Pac-Bell DSL up in Davis, and I haven't noticed any slow down. It's been staying up pretty well and although all the guys on their install crew smoke crack, if you know how to fix their work and clean up your phone line, you can get good speed. I just tried to see what kind of bandwidth I was getting and at 00:21 on a saturday night, I got 127K/s using ncftp3 to ftp from zeus.kernel.org.
I'm currently in the process of finding housing in the East Bay, and will probably end up getting a loop from covad or northpoint, and then going with the ISP of my choice (Read: whoever has the best network when I get my DSL) for DSL. It'll cost more, but that'll more than make up for the few times I did have to call pac-bell. When the service is up it's good, just hope you don't have to call them.
Packages are nice, but really, if we want to see Linux make it in the Real World (TM) we need to advance to the 21st century and recognize that we must have a simple and easy means of installing new software. I propose that we follow Apple's lead in this area and move to Self Extracting Executables, ELF binaries that you run and will extract the software and install it for you, without the hassle of remembering arcane flags and what program you're supposed to use.
Just look at it! The author of the article makes a very good point. How many of you really look over a binary before you install it? Do you just rpm a package and then run it? What do you have to lose from running this random binary? No more than if you downloaded the rpm and ran the binaries contained therein.
What we as the Open Source community need to do is create a standard install tool, like what windows programmers have with the install shield software. The software could be customised, and could be written to reconize the directory structure, and install the files in the correct locations, maybe through the use of certain files that would be kept in a standard location, like/opt/local/lib/install/.
So, whaddya think? Think we can get something whipped together? Even just a proof of concept done in a combination of perl and python? We certainly don't want to make the mistake OS/2 made and not at least keep up with what windows has had for years.
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My roommate and I have Pac-Bell DSL up in Davis, and I haven't noticed any slow down. It's been staying up pretty well and although all the guys on their install crew smoke crack, if you know how to fix their work and clean up your phone line, you can get good speed. I just tried to see what kind of bandwidth I was getting and at 00:21 on a saturday night, I got 127K/s using ncftp3 to ftp from zeus.kernel.org.
I'm currently in the process of finding housing in the East Bay, and will probably end up getting a loop from covad or northpoint, and then going with the ISP of my choice (Read: whoever has the best network when I get my DSL) for DSL. It'll cost more, but that'll more than make up for the few times I did have to call pac-bell. When the service is up it's good, just hope you don't have to call them.
-ssd
Packages are nice, but really, if we want to see Linux make it in the Real World (TM) we need to advance to the 21st century and recognize that we must have a simple and easy means of installing new software. I propose that we follow Apple's lead in this area and move to Self Extracting Executables, ELF binaries that you run and will extract the software and install it for you, without the hassle of remembering arcane flags and what program you're supposed to use.
/opt/local/lib/install/.
Just look at it! The author of the article makes a very good point. How many of you really look over a binary before you install it? Do you just rpm a package and then run it? What do you have to lose from running this random binary? No more than if you downloaded the rpm and ran the binaries contained therein.
What we as the Open Source community need to do is create a standard install tool, like what windows programmers have with the install shield software. The software could be customised, and could be written to reconize the directory structure, and install the files in the correct locations, maybe through the use of certain files that would be kept in a standard location, like
So, whaddya think? Think we can get something whipped together? Even just a proof of concept done in a combination of perl and python? We certainly don't want to make the mistake OS/2 made and not at least keep up with what windows has had for years.
-ssd