4) Price. I picked up an iBook and a 128 MB memory module for less than $2000. A comparable x86 laptop would cost much more. And since I knew I'd run Linux on it, no matter whether I bought Apple or x86, the cheaper one wins.
You can pick a decent Toshiba laptop for ~1500 plus add amore RAM and PCMCIA card. that'll cost you less than $2000.
And yes they run linux very well. iBook does not really run linux, some kernel hacker got kernel to boot on it, but there is no a working Linux distribution that'd run on it..
Re:So what I want to know is when my TNT works...
on
No Next Q3Test
·
· Score: 1
The NVidia TNT drivers for Linux are slow, buggy, unstable and incomplete. NON 3DFx users will probably have to wait for XFree86 4.0. I have tried to get Q2 to work with my TNT on linux. Aside from being a pain to get working, it is also at least trwo times slower than in windows... if you have TNT play in windows for now..
I tried out slink (2.1) for a few weeks, and found that it was poorly organized (the development teams)and the release was very backleveled, e.g.
Whats wrong with the development teams and organization?
XFree 3.3.2?!?, when 3.3.5 has been out a while, and most importantly, No easy way to upgrade userland stuff unless you want to go the whole 9 yards to UNSTABLE.
Dude, slink has been released in March it and it was frozen in November (before 3.3.3 was released) If you want slink debs for 3.3.3.1 I think you can find them on www.netgod.net/x. Also there is somewhere an "unofficial" list of sites that carry non-main debs (including X, gnome, KDE, etc)
in any of those cases all ou have to do is plug a corresponding line in/etc/apt/sources list and run apt-get update;apt-get upgrade
Re:Debian needs to get their act together (Score:) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 15, @02:40PM EDT (#) I agree with this completely.
I tried out slink (2.1) for a few weeks, and found that it was poorly organized (the development teams)and the release was very backleveled, e.g.
Whats wrong with the development teams and organization?
XFree 3.3.2?!?, when 3.3.5 has been out a while, and most importantly, No easy way to upgrade userland stuff unless you want to go the whole 9 yards to UNSTABLE.
Dude, slink has been released in March it and it was frozen in November (before 3.3.3 was released) If you want slink debs for 3.3.3.1 I think you can find them on www.netgod.net/x. Also there is somewhere an "unofficial" list of sites that carry non-main debs (including X, gnome, KDE, etc)
in any of those cases all ou have to do is plug a corresponding line in/etc/apt/sources list and run apt-get update;apt-get upgrade
The companies say they will donate all profits from the sale of the retail GNU/Linux package to Software in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization for open source projects.
May be there is a good support in kernel. But the Quality of distributions that would run on Ultra boxes I would say is BETA. BTW, Both, RedHat 6.0 and Debian 2.1 for sparc will run on Sun Ultra machines. They will use 64bit kernel, compiler and libraries but there rest of programs are still compiled as 32bit...
1) Graphics system sucks ass. No 3D support, but it does not do 2D well either (I sit in front of an Ultra5 which was bought for $3k a year ago, it can only do 8bpp at a decent resolution
2) Disk system sucks. IDE controller, no SCSI. Slow ass IDE hard drives(aka, probably slower than on your sub $1000 PC). Can only hold one hard drive.
I'd buy Ultra5 if it was $1000 _maybe_, but for $2000 you can buy a better PC, with SCSI disks Kick ass 3D graphics, SONY monitor, 3D sound etc. Heck, I seven aw an Athlonn based IBM Aptiva for about ~$2000 bucks. SO just get a high end PC and run Linux or FreeBSD on it, you'll be happy
Ultra5 and Ultra10 are crapware workstations. Other workstations like SUN Ultra2 or SGI O2 are much more decent but they cost big $$ too..
I see that many people suggest rpmfind. So let me point out the differences (and inferiority of the rpmfind aproach)
1) Debian's dselect and apt not just download the package that you need, they also solve the dependencies and conflicts automatically (apt-get) or interactively (dselect) and download or remove the packages that depend or conflict.
2) apt-get and dselect do not just download packages, they also install them.
3) This is the biggest difference. Debian package management was designed with network installs/updates/upgrades in mind. If a program is a free program (GPL, BSD, etc) then it is most likely a part of the OFFICIAL main Debian distribution. This means that you don't have to look in various places for packages, everything is in one place. Second, the packages are usually of higher quality, since they are a part of distribution and they MUST meet all the guidelines of the distribution. If a package is buggy, the distribution will not release until it is fixed (or removed from main tree if it is too late)
I see that many people suggest rpmfind. So let me point out the differences (and inferiority of the rpmfind aproach) 1) Debian's dselect and apt not just download the package that you need, they also solve the dependencies and conflicts automatically (apt-get) or interactively (dselect) and download or remove the packages that depend or conflict. 2) apt-get and dselect do not just download packages, they also install them. 3) This is the biggest difference. Debian package management was designed with network installs/updates/upgrades in mind. If a program is a free program (GPL, BSD, etc) then it is most likely a part of the OFFICIAL main Debian distribution. This means that you don't have to look in various places for packages, everything is in one place. Second, the packages are usually of higher quality, since they are a part of distribution and they MUST meet all the guidelines of the distribution. If a package is buggy, the distribution will not release until it is fixed (or removed from main tree if it is too late)
There is a difference. If package is free it is part of Debian, point. This is why potato has ~4000 packages as of right now. You don't have to hunt for packages on the web looking in various dubious places. Since those packages are part of the distribution, they follow guideliness of the distribution. Very often I saw dependencies break easily on redhat, just because those packages are not packaged by redhat, they sometimes don't have the quality of the main redhat packages.
Taking all C++ pros and C's cons aside, is it really worth rewriting the whole damn thing from scratch? I understand that there are hackers who just want to cut their teeth on something new, but what about users? What about stability? What about portability?
Is it really cheaper than a bunch of NT4 workstations ? And since they're willing to go with non-windows software, is it really cheaper than a bunch of linux workstations ?
Yes, it is probably cheaper. Don't forget that we are talking about "thin" clients versus "fat" clients. Think about system administration costs. Those clients require NO administration at all, all you have to do is setup the server. It is much easier to adminster one Solaris server than 1 NT (or linux server) + dozens of NT (or linux clients). Any clued sysadmin would opt for SUN's client-server solution. Sure, you could build this kind of solution with Linux too(or any other unix), but SUN gives you a "turn-key" solution ready to run.
But in the end, what will it help the students learn ? I mean, learning an OS that's not in use anywhere else isn't very useful for the students, is it?
Bullshit. They learn UNIX (Solaris, Linux, *BSD all are unix variants). UNIX is used in lots of places and now is becomming more popular than it ever was. If you teach students UNIX, they will also acquire problems solving skills which can be applied to any OS. Learning Windows means just learning Windows GUI, you still have no idea whats going on beyond that GUI or how the OS works.
I wonder what kind of applications run on those machines. What will the kids do when they're thrown in real life and the wonderful proprietary Sun applications are nowhere to be found...
They learn UNIX applications dude (most of which aren't available or suck on non-unix OSes). Plus, they also run StarOffice (an MS Office look-alike for Solaris, Linux, indows, etc), netscape, whole bunch of other applications...
Linux will not have a truely good graphical shell until its users prefer that shell to a command prompt. And that will never happen, in all my time using mc I have NEVER said "damn, this is so much faster than just typing 'mv' or 'cp' or running a program". graphical shells are more friendly but trade speed for that friendliness. This is why I say that Linux and Windows don't exist in the same markets. Linux and Windows users want to do different things different ways. I myself would hate to be locked into some stupid GUI shell that thinks that it is smarter than I am, this is why I like unix more. You have GUI and you have command line shell, all at the same time.
How do you upgrade OS components without dropping to shell? Whould you really use a gui front end to do that? Do you really trust rpm your kernel package?
In windows just use the windows update.. fast and easy for newbies.
This is why Linux is not a real competitor to Win9x. Until I see a linux distribution that can be completely installed, configured and treaked without dropping to shell or text editor, I will not change my mind. Linux is fine for servers, programmers, unix geeks.. but a consumer OS it ain't
Doh, P166/64MB is FINE to run Windows95 on. I never had problems with it on such setup, plus Netscape on Windows is more stable and on Linux and MS Office kicks StarOffice's butt in all cathegories (excpet the price)
Are you smoking crack or what? Debian package management suite is and was far superior to anything that redhat had. dpkg/dselect/apt, never break and are pretty much rock solid. You can sync your system with ftp mirrors with just 2 commands. Hell you can upgrade the whole system with apt-get dist-upgrade command from ftp/http/cdrom/whatever. dselect and apt also take care of dependencies and conflicts automatically. There are other benefits too, these are just a few that I got from top of my head.
Are you smoking crack or what? Debian package management suite is and was far superior to anything that redhat had. dpkg/dselect/apt, never break and are pretty much rock solid. You can sync your system with ftp mirrors with just 2 commands. Hell you can upgrade the whole system with apt-get dist-upgrade command from ftp/http/cdrom/whatever. dselect and apt also take care of dependencies and conflicts automatically. There are other benefits too, these are just a few that I got from top of my head.
Yes, optimization is a good reason to use FreeBSD (e.g. make egcs default compiler and use -mpentimum flag for example)
As for Debian website, If you go to www.debian.org and then click on "Documentation", you'll find the FAQ, user's manual, installation manual for each arch and a link to a Debian Documentation proje ct (yes, their search does not wrok for me either)
If you are just a user, you can't notice any difference unless you run uname or something like that.
However, there are some differences when comparing Debian and FreeBSD (I use both)
1) Package management is different. FreeBSD has build-in very capable package management system with pkg_add, cvsup, ports. However, I still prefer the Debian way to any other Linux or *BSD. They started working on their pkg mngmt tools since the beginning and IMHO, they got it right.
2) FreeBSD is not just a kernel, it is a rather complete OS. They work on kernel, libraries, programs, documentation, etc. However, Debian GNU/Linux is just as complete system. If you look, the most important components mostly come from only 2 sources GNU and Linux kernel.
3) Installation is slightly different (but both, FreeBSD and Debian are arcane to install for a unix newbie)
Both systems are very solid. I would chose any of the two instead of redhat or slackware. But then, probably these two simply meet my particular needs better than others..
Slashdot Mirror
4) Price. I picked up an iBook and a 128 MB memory module for less than $2000. A comparable x86 laptop would cost much more. And since I knew I'd run Linux on it, no matter whether I bought Apple or x86, the cheaper one wins.
..
You can pick a decent Toshiba laptop for ~1500 plus add amore RAM and PCMCIA card. that'll cost you less than $2000.
And yes they run linux very well. iBook does not really run linux, some kernel hacker got kernel to boot on it, but there is no a working Linux distribution that'd run on it
The NVidia TNT drivers for Linux are slow, buggy, unstable and incomplete. NON 3DFx users will probably have to wait for XFree86 4.0. I have tried to get Q2 to work with my TNT on linux. Aside from being a pain to get working, it is also at least trwo times slower than in windows... if you have TNT play in windows for now ..
Just because Debian makes a 100% free distrib, what is stopping RedHat from making their own 100% free distrib?
I agree with this completely.
/etc/apt/sources list and run apt-get update;apt-get upgrade
I tried out slink (2.1) for a few weeks, and found that it was poorly organized (the development teams)and the release was very backleveled, e.g.
Whats wrong with the development teams and organization?
XFree 3.3.2?!?, when 3.3.5 has been out a while, and most importantly, No easy way to upgrade userland stuff unless you want to go the whole 9 yards to UNSTABLE.
Dude, slink has been released in March it and it was frozen in November (before 3.3.3 was released)
If you want slink debs for 3.3.3.1 I think you can find them on www.netgod.net/x. Also there is somewhere an "unofficial" list of sites that carry non-main debs (including X, gnome, KDE, etc)
in any of those cases all ou have to do is plug a corresponding line in
Re:Debian needs to get their act together (Score:)
/etc/apt/sources list and run apt-get update;apt-get upgrade
by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 15, @02:40PM EDT (#)
I agree with this completely.
I tried out slink (2.1) for a few weeks, and found that it was poorly organized (the development teams)and the release was very backleveled, e.g.
Whats wrong with the development teams and organization?
XFree 3.3.2?!?, when 3.3.5 has been out a while, and most importantly, No easy way to upgrade userland stuff unless you want to go the whole 9 yards to UNSTABLE.
Dude, slink has been released in March it and it was frozen in November (before 3.3.3 was released)
If you want slink debs for 3.3.3.1 I think you can find them on www.netgod.net/x. Also there is somewhere an "unofficial" list of sites that carry non-main debs (including X, gnome, KDE, etc)
in any of those cases all ou have to do is plug a corresponding line in
The companies say they will donate all profits from the sale of the retail GNU/Linux package to Software in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization for open source projects.
I think this rocks.
May be there is a good support in kernel. ...
But the Quality of distributions that would run on Ultra boxes I would say is BETA. BTW, Both, RedHat 6.0 and Debian 2.1 for sparc will run on Sun Ultra machines. They will use 64bit kernel, compiler and libraries but there rest of programs are still compiled as 32bit
Don't get fooled by SUN, Ultra5 is crap because:
1) Graphics system sucks ass. No 3D support, but it does not do 2D well either (I sit in front of an Ultra5 which was bought for $3k a year ago, it can only do 8bpp at a decent resolution
2) Disk system sucks. IDE controller, no SCSI. Slow ass IDE hard drives(aka, probably slower than on your sub $1000 PC). Can only hold one hard drive.
I'd buy Ultra5 if it was $1000 _maybe_, but
for $2000 you can buy a better PC, with SCSI disks
Kick ass 3D graphics, SONY monitor, 3D sound etc. Heck, I seven aw an Athlonn based IBM Aptiva for about ~$2000 bucks. SO just get a high end PC and run Linux or FreeBSD on it, you'll be happy
Ultra5 and Ultra10 are crapware workstations. Other workstations like SUN Ultra2 or SGI O2 are much more decent but they cost big $$ too..
Doh, Debian GNU/Linux could update/upgrade itself for AGES. RedHat was the ZDnets problem...
I see that many people suggest rpmfind. So let me point out the differences (and inferiority of the rpmfind aproach)
1) Debian's dselect and apt not just download the package that you need, they also solve the dependencies and conflicts automatically (apt-get) or interactively (dselect) and download or remove the packages that depend or conflict.
2) apt-get and dselect do not just download packages, they also install them.
3) This is the biggest difference. Debian package management was designed with network installs/updates/upgrades in mind. If a program is a free program (GPL, BSD, etc) then it is most likely a part of the OFFICIAL main Debian distribution. This means that you don't have to look in various places for packages, everything is in one place. Second, the packages are usually of higher quality, since they are a part of distribution and they MUST meet all the guidelines of the distribution. If a package is buggy, the distribution will not release until it is fixed (or removed from main tree if it is too late)
I see that many people suggest rpmfind. So let me point out the differences (and inferiority of the rpmfind aproach) 1) Debian's dselect and apt not just download the package that you need, they also solve the dependencies and conflicts automatically (apt-get) or interactively (dselect) and download or remove the packages that depend or conflict. 2) apt-get and dselect do not just download packages, they also install them. 3) This is the biggest difference. Debian package management was designed with network installs/updates/upgrades in mind. If a program is a free program (GPL, BSD, etc) then it is most likely a part of the OFFICIAL main Debian distribution. This means that you don't have to look in various places for packages, everything is in one place. Second, the packages are usually of higher quality, since they are a part of distribution and they MUST meet all the guidelines of the distribution. If a package is buggy, the distribution will not release until it is fixed (or removed from main tree if it is too late)
There is a difference. If package is free it is part of Debian, point. This is why potato has ~4000 packages as of right now. You don't have to hunt for packages on the web looking in various dubious places. Since those packages are part of the distribution, they follow guideliness of the distribution. Very often I saw dependencies break easily on redhat, just because those packages are not packaged by redhat, they sometimes don't have the quality of the main redhat packages.
Taking all C++ pros and C's cons aside, is it really worth rewriting the whole damn thing from scratch? I understand that there are hackers who just want to cut their teeth on something new, but what about users? What about stability? What about portability?
Is it really cheaper than a bunch of NT4 workstations ? And since they're willing to go with non-windows software, is it really cheaper than a bunch of linux workstations ?
Yes, it is probably cheaper. Don't forget that we are talking about "thin" clients versus "fat" clients. Think about system administration costs. Those clients require NO administration at all, all you have to do is setup the server. It is much easier to adminster one Solaris server than 1 NT (or linux server) + dozens of NT (or linux clients). Any clued sysadmin would opt for SUN's client-server solution. Sure, you could build this kind of solution with Linux too(or any other unix), but SUN gives you a "turn-key" solution ready to run.
But in the end, what will it help the students learn ? I mean, learning an OS that's not in use anywhere else isn't very useful for the students, is it?
Bullshit. They learn UNIX (Solaris, Linux, *BSD all are unix variants). UNIX is used in lots of places and now is becomming more popular than it ever was. If you teach students UNIX, they will also acquire problems solving skills which can be applied to any OS. Learning Windows means just learning Windows GUI, you still have no idea whats going on beyond that GUI or how the OS works.
I wonder what kind of applications run on those machines. What will the kids do when they're thrown in real life and the wonderful proprietary Sun applications are nowhere to be found...
They learn UNIX applications dude (most of which aren't available or suck on non-unix OSes). Plus, they also run StarOffice (an MS Office look-alike for Solaris, Linux, indows, etc), netscape, whole bunch of other applications...
Linux will not have a truely good graphical shell until its users prefer that shell to a command prompt. And that will
never happen, in all my time using mc I have NEVER said "damn, this is so much faster than just typing 'mv' or 'cp' or
running a program". graphical shells are more friendly but trade speed for that friendliness.
This is why I say that Linux and Windows don't exist in the same markets. Linux and Windows users want to do different things different ways. I myself would hate to be locked into some stupid GUI shell that thinks that it is smarter than I am, this is why I like unix more. You have GUI and you have command line shell, all at the same time.
How do you upgrade OS components without dropping to shell? Whould you really use a gui front end to do that? Do you really trust rpm your kernel package?
In windows just use the windows update.. fast and easy for newbies.
This is why Linux is not a real competitor to Win9x. Until I see a linux distribution that can be completely installed, configured and treaked without dropping to shell or text editor, I will not change my mind. Linux is fine for servers, programmers, unix geeks.. but a consumer OS it ain't
Doh, P166/64MB is FINE to run Windows95 on. I never had problems with it on such setup, plus Netscape on Windows is more stable and on Linux and MS Office kicks StarOffice's butt in all cathegories (excpet the price)
If you need a decent operating system for any use then you shouldn't be using Unix or any variant of unix.
Obviously a troll, just ingnore him.
LAUGH
Are you smoking crack or what? Debian package management suite is and was far superior to anything that redhat had. dpkg/dselect/apt, never break and are pretty much rock solid. You can sync your system with ftp mirrors with just 2 commands. Hell you can upgrade the whole system with apt-get dist-upgrade command from ftp/http/cdrom/whatever. dselect and apt also take care of dependencies and conflicts automatically. There are other benefits too, these are just a few that I got from top of my head.
RedHat LAGS in this area, sorry.
LAUGH
Are you smoking crack or what? Debian package management suite is and was far superior to anything that redhat had. dpkg/dselect/apt, never break and are pretty much rock solid. You can sync your system with ftp mirrors with just 2 commands. Hell you can upgrade the whole system with apt-get dist-upgrade command from ftp/http/cdrom/whatever. dselect and apt also take care of dependencies and conflicts automatically. There are other benefits too, these are just a few that I got from top of my head.
RedHat LAGS in this area, sorry.
Check out "Advanced C Programming by Example". Very good book about C in general, covers some of the most obscure functions in string.h ...
Oh, yes, FreeBSD and Debian init scripts are different
Yes, optimization is a good reason to use FreeBSD (e.g. make egcs default compiler and use -mpentimum flag for example)
As for Debian website, If you go to www.debian.org and then click on "Documentation", you'll find the FAQ, user's manual, installation manual for each arch and a link to a Debian Documentation proje ct (yes, their search does not wrok for me either)
If you are just a user, you can't notice any difference unless you run uname or something like that.
However, there are some differences when comparing Debian and FreeBSD (I use both)
1) Package management is different. FreeBSD has build-in very capable package management system with pkg_add, cvsup, ports. However, I still prefer the Debian way to any other Linux or *BSD. They started working on their pkg mngmt tools since the beginning and IMHO, they got it right.
2) FreeBSD is not just a kernel, it is a rather complete OS. They work on kernel, libraries, programs, documentation, etc. However, Debian GNU/Linux is just as complete system. If you look, the most important components mostly come from only 2 sources GNU and Linux kernel.
3) Installation is slightly different (but both, FreeBSD and Debian are arcane to install for a unix newbie)
Both systems are very solid. I would chose any of the two instead of redhat or slackware. But then, probably these two simply meet my particular needs better than others..