Just to defend against your attacks on the character of Mac OS/System x... I do not see how you can question its validity as "a system at all." The irony of your stance is especially poignant when you consider the famous debate between Linus and Tannenbaum, who similarly argued that Linux is a bad system design." The point here is that both Linux and Mac System x are Monolithic, as opposed to the Microkernels that Tannenbaum and the academic community supported.
Bear with me on this next point for a moment, if you will. Classic Mac OS, like Linux, tend to be stable systems in general, but due to their monolithic nature, they are can only be as stable as their weakest link. Early Macintoshes were very stable, but they were closed systems. They were very good PCs for their time, but what you call bad system design might better be considered eggregious hacks to support an archaic system. In the long run they hurt the Mac OS, but the useful life of Macintoshes were far greater than Intel peers. Nevermind Windows, I know of Macs that were useful (and used) almost as long as Linux has existed.
The problem is that being a well defined (Mac ROM) and closed system, the Macintosh couldn't really adapt when new ideas in computing were becoming the norm for general consumers. You know, newfangled things like CD-ROMS, 802.2 Ethernet and TCP/IP (for a Personal Computer? No Way!). The crude hack was "extensions", after the fact drivers that played monkey in the middle with the system folders and extended the Mac in ways that it was never designed for. Considering the constraints they placed on themselves, Apple did a fine job, and Macintoshes outlasted generations of Intel PCs, up utill about the time Windows 95 brought half decent attempts at memory protection and a WIMP GUI, finally making 68K Macs less than viable as a primary computer.
As for Apple having almost no experience with OS X, I have to strongly disagree. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs founded NeXT, and NextStep was a stable Unix longer than Linux existed. Steve Jobs is back at Apple, and he brought his Unix with him. Just about all of Mac OS X technologies are stable and well understood systems, from the Mach Microkernel foundation, the BSD based single server and Unix Security model, the Free/NetBSD userland, the Carbon MacOS toolkit, the Mach-o binary, ObjectiveC source, up to the DisplayPDF GUI descended from the NeXT DisplayPostScript system.
Apple hardly had "weak support of their own hardware platform". Rather, their support was so solid, that such concepts of "plug and play" weren't even an issue, that was and still is an Ideal that Microsoft aspired to reach, as all hardware supported by Apple was seamless if you could manage to keep SCSI IDs unique - can you count to 6? Unfortunately, 3rd party hardware, and lazy non-Apple software started to require Extensions to be functional, and that is the straw that broke the camel's back. This is the strongest concrete argument against binary only drivers for Linux... in a mololithic system, drivers step on each others' toes, and instability results. If all Linux drivers were only.o binaries, then Linux would be an unworkable sytem - recompilation is the only saving grace of Linux... the GPL is essential to the survival of Linux in a dynamic hardware platform.
As for MS's quality... is it better or isn't it? If my graphics card is poorly "supported", then the fact that "they support a much broader base of hardware devices" is meaningless. Either the hardware you need is supported, or it isn't. PCI is an open standard, and not x86 specific in any way. NuBus devices tended to be more expensive than ISA, but were far better supported (i.e. What is an IRQ? Eeew, why?) The Linux "zoo" environment consisted of Linus' PC. Early users added support for their PCs. This eventually added up to a very populated zoo, but by sheer number of interested users (those frustrated by AST's lack of public leadership for a Free Minix.). This eventually built up a large base of hardware support, but not in the way that you seemed to imply with your zoo metaphor - for the longest time, weak hardware support was considered a very significant Linux flaw. Commercial companies tend not to have individual systems that they can use as a target to port to... they rather port to a class of systems, which seems to be what you refer to with your "zoo" analogy. In this aspect, BSD is much stronger in "zoo" support, as embodied by NetBSD. NetBSD is designed to be very portable, and that is maintained... once hardware is supported for any of the large stable of NetBSD platforms, is it usually supported for all NetBSD platforms. Even in desktop-oriented hardware - NetBSD was the first Free OS supporting USB for eample.
That is not to say that Microsoft is necessarily bad with system design. Windows NT was a very good design, a MicroKernel that IIRC was written on MIPS hardware and then ported to IA-32, just to prove its portability. When NT supports hardware, I have found that the support is usually quite robust. Unfortunately, if graphics hardware support is at all flaky, then the system suffers. As NT is a thorougly graphical platform, MS chose to integrate the Graphics subsystem into the kernel level for performance reasons. This defeats most of the advantages to a microkernel based design. They have also discontinues support for non Intel platforms, which was another Win for Win NT. While these decisions don't significantly impact marketshare, they have severely hurt the integrity of the system. Similarly, Mac OS X and Darwin are based on the Mach MicroKernel, but only implemented as a single server, which is effectively just a monolithic kernel with message passing overhead. And while Mac OS X is limited to PPC hardware, there is at least the potential for Darwin to run on other Mach supported Platforms, especially IA-32.
As for Apple and RISC... the PPC is arguably the weaskest implementation of RISC. More significantly, the point is moot - The RISC/CISC argument is archaic in the face of superscalar architectures. Curent Intel processors don't use the X86 instructions internally, they run microcode similar to RISC style instructions. And the G4 with Altivec is very un-RISC-like. Apple has positioned itself as a hardware company, but their software was always what made their systems valuable. Just because the Mac OS was designed as a single-threaded single-user OS doesn't mean it was a poorly designed system. Remember that it was a full windowing system when Bill Gates was advocating the 640KiB ceiling. Unix running X11 was not feasible without a massive cash investment, and if you had massive cash, you could have bought an Apple Lisa. The Apple Lisa was designed as a multitasking OS from the start, but it was too pricy to have any commercial succes, so Apple pared back the design to create the original Macintosh. In the 80's the limit was not software design but production costs.
Wow, it really looks like I an against every single paragraph you wrote, but at this point I might as well go for broke! Apple realised that their hack upon hack of cutting edge early 80's PC design was unmaintainable, so they tried to maintain backwards compatibility while integrating technology that had become more readily available. You say that they were afraid of Linux as a competetor, but it sems that you are forgetting about their previous Unix on Mach, MkLinux. They didn't fear Linux as a competetor, they actually allocated significant resources into Linux on Mac development for a few years, before BSD was even considered. The issue had nothing to do with any of your imagined "desktop dominance" by Linux, but with the GNU GPL. BSD wasn't chosen so much as NeXTStep. BSD happened to be a foundation for that platform, but more importantly, NeXT BSD was hosted on Mach, so that the MkLinux development effort wasn't a complete loss, they recovered much of the Mach related work. After purchasing NeXT wholesale, they leveraged the Linux inspired hype of "Open Source" without the cost of truly embracing Free Software with their APSL. Marketing Genious building upon many years of Next's technical wizardry.
Your last paragraph missed the point of Linux. It is just an implementaion of POSIX standards. Especially with Open Source and Free Software, anything that runs on Linux runs on Mac OS X by virtue of the POSIX compliance in BSD as well. The only exception is the few binary-only applications which run on Linux while running against the Free Software spirit of Linux. In contrast, in addition to Free GNU software, Mac OS X draws on the large base of existing NeXTStep/OpenStep software and Mac OS software. If Darwin runs on your Mac, then RAM seems to be the only limit or OS X running on your Mac as well. If Mac OS X won't run on your Mac, then LinuxPPC or MkLinux are fine choices. But despite my preference for Free Software, I have to admit that if you can run Mac OS X, then it currently beats Linux hands-down.
I remember in '96 everybody telling me how slow Linux was on the Mac. Of course, that's because MkLinux was all that we knew about.
Native Linux is almost certainly faster than Darwin, a BSD system hosted on the Mach Subsystem. It would be interesting, and possibly valuable to see a proper and thorough attempt at comparing performance of MkLinux vs Darwin. (It seems that MkLinux is only available with Kernel 2.2, though somebody hacked a 2.4 version.)
This might also reveal issues relating to Mach that are distinct from LinuxPPC or NetBSD, which would also make good data points. If time weren't an issue, OpenBSD, Debian and the other Linux Distros would be nice too.
A less technical but still valid issue is that of supporting Free Software. While Darwin is Open Source, it is not "Free", so it is less than ideal for development unless you are specifically targeting Mac OS X. While Linux and the GPL mean that you are forced to support the Free Foftware community if you distribute a derived product, the APSL effectively makes you an unpaid Apple developer, supporting the Apple community, whom in most cases already bought their support from Apple Computer Corp. If you ever tried to made your derived product commercial, you would have to take great pains not to attract the Ire of the big Apple, or your license might be pulled out from under you, and they would have full rights to your product to boot.
Don't get me wrong; I would love to run Mac OS X, but I am not yet ready for the prerequisite hardware investment, my 604 still works. Unless I am trying to hack OS 10 support for my "Mac" (clone), I would not use Darwin as a platform for development without remuneration, preferably from Apple. If I were _really_ determined and talented, I might even attempt to add Darwin interfaces to a Free Software system like NetBSD. (Not that I could... but for the sake of curiosity, does anybody know if Mac OS X makes direct use of the Mach subsystem?)
Of course, the moral issues are more substantial than any technical reasons, right? Theoretically, all technical issues are solved over time. But at the moment, Linux is much better for interoperability, especially in the department of mounting non-native filesystems. Darwin, and AFAIK all of the Free Software BSDs have a paucity of available filesystem drivers.(FFS[nee UFS], Ext2[non-anynchrounously], cdromfs[iso9660], msdos[FAT], LFS[Log structured], and FFS+softupdates) Darwin might only support UFS(really FFS?), HFS+ and cdromfs.
Just to play the devils advocate, Darwin isn't without merit. Debian is dead easy to admin once you know the Debian tools, but before that it might as well be Slackware. Darwin has NetInfo, which is supposed to be very easy to use for administration, and a very powerful centralized tool which may be less of a learning curve than Debian. It is supposed to respect standard/etc files as well. Also, the Fink project has ported Apt and "dpkg" to Darwin, for your apt-get goodness needs. The best reason, which admittedly invalidates my last point, is that Darwin comes pre-installed. While this may not seem like that big of an issue for many slashdotters, I find that repartitioninging a Mac is not as easy as the standard Windows based PC:
You must be aware of the various system related partitions; pdisk is not as pleasant as cfdisk or even fdisk; there is no lossless repartitioning utility like Partition Magic or even FIPS - you must use a defragmenter to clear a contiguous area from the end of the partiton, alter the partiton table, then repair the "resized" filesystem. The best answer is usually just to buy another hard drive, or just the extant Darwin.
Oh yeah, MOL (Mac On Linux) is worth considering if your Mac (clone) isn't up to running Mac OS X. Does anybody know what ever happened to Sheepshaver? It runs Mac OS under BeOS, and was supposedly ported to LinuxPPC.
I took all of the claims of "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" to heart, and killed two birds with one stone!
Practically like getting to vote twice, even if idealism tends to guide my vote While I like Nader, I don't much care for the Green Party. It's too damn bad that Buchanan hijacked the Reform party; I would have enjoyed voting for John Haeglin, even if I was the only one in my region.
Anyhow, I feel that Gore makes a much better voice of dissent then he does a figurehead. I quite enjoyed his more recent speeches.
Now if you want to change Gore to Clinton, then I'd have to agree with you. Perot really shook things up, for better _and_ for worse.
I had a similar experience with my 1541. I was playing Pool of Radiance at the time. My dad sliced the plastic floppy covering to remove the floppy disk media, and propped the floppy casing open with Q-tips so the felt inner lining could dry.
To this day, I still have the cherished 5.25" floppy, resealed in electrical tape. Of course, sides 3 and 4 (on disk 2) are reversed.
I suspect that a nice fresh water dousing would have done some good for your C=128.
My few rediculous 486 cooling experiments haven't fared nearly as well.
Wow. Thank you, I forgot about that issue of "swaying public opinion." I'd have to say that true philanthropy is basically counterproductive in the business sector, so that all commercial examples of your point b) really fall into the broader category of a). To do something in the "public interest" for any viable commercial entity really means to do something to genereate "public interest" in your product. I don't intend this to be a value judgement as much as a simplification.
Just to refocus on your earlier question of "Why Linux?", this related to a specific example of Linux justification from when I worked at SGI: They embraced Linux because it was obviously going to continue becoming more popular (buzz et. al.) so it could be a valuable vehicle to widen acceptance and public interest in SGI technology and methodolgy. I'll admit this was a case where I felt closer to your perspective in preferring the BSD avenue to the Copyleft/GPL, yet it is a real example of an answer to your original question...
To widen acceptance and public interest SGI joined the Linux/GPL buzz when releasing their technologies because it has a noisier buzz than BSD-style Free Softare. So as you point out, this isn't a case of not having the resources to maintain something, but for more effectively using those resources to push your technology into mass acceptance via Free Software. While BSD should technically be more effective due to less restraints in distribution, GPL and Copyleft is at the moment more effective, as a backlash to egregious acts of bad faith from major players in the computing sector. Politics usually effect public opinion more than technological benefits or theoretical limits.
If you don't like 4DWM, you can always use GNOME.
I think that it is available on the Freeware CDs, and is very likely available as a.tardist if you aren't interested in source. If you are interested, I'm sure you can find it without me posting the links.
Perhaps is it too bad that SGI didn't keep (absolute) control of MIPS. They were spun off into their own company, and SGI drew Itanium into their roadmap in a big way, unfortunately. The Origin 3000 family was supposed to offer a choice between MIPS and Itanium, but it looks like Intel delays stopped that from happening, and like you said, SGI was burned. SGI does (AFAIK) maintain a large part of the leadership for the MIPS architecture, so at least they can keep moving.
All of this talk of megahertz is rediculous, especially since gigahertz became reasonable. How often do you realistically max out your CPU? Unless you do some very specific process intensive work, like running a remderfarm, the "MegaHertz Myth" is a moot point.
The reason to Buy a Single CPU SGI workstation, is not for the raw compute power of the MIPS CPU, but for the unmatched I/O capability. This fits in with the target markets of realtime graphics processing, and Huge Dataset Manipulation like Data Mining. XFS is stable and scalable into the Petabyte range, memory Bandwidth is capable of 1.6 GB/sec, and the O2 family offers UMA for effective graphics memory capacity near system RAM capacity.
Just because SGI bus architectures are vital in enterprise/high-compute/multiuser situations doesn't mean that there isn't a need for high bandwidth in (some) workstations.
As for the Alpha, that obviously failed when MS Windows finally dropped support! J/K. Price/performance is much higher with x86 architecture, if you really need Raw Compute, you will get more cycles for your dollar with a farm of commodity PCs. For the record, Athalon systems use the EV(7 if memory serves) architecture, so should have relatively good SMP performance as well. If you need maximum compute per volime (as opposed to per currency) then you would still be best served with an Alpha cluster.
Isn't it common knowledge that Quake3 isn't a CPU limited Benchmark as much as it is GPU/VRAM limited? I would be really interested to see a benchmark comparing Quake3 performance with both systems containing the ATI Radeon 7500, since that seems to be the easiest common ground for Video cards. Also good would be to compare the Single (933MHz if 1GHz isn't possible) versus the Dual G4 model with a Single and Dual P4 and/or Athalon CPU machine. It would be nice to get the latest model of these x86 architecute CPUs, and underclock them to 1GHz, then rebench them at increasing speed to see if/when they surpass the G4 performance. I suspect that they will surpass G4 performance, as Mac Video Drivers aren't likely to be as mature as Windows Drivers. Perhaps a Linux/XFree benchmark would be a good datapoint as well. Of course, Mac OS 9.2 versus Mac OS X 10.1x would also be part of this mix.
The trouble is that a GeForce 4 MX isn't likely a gaming performance type part - The GeForce 2 MX tended to underperform the previous generation GeForce 256 on gaming benchmarks. When the GeForce 4 MX is released for PCs, then a fairer benchmarking could be more plausible.
Then, we could have Netcraft apply the ByteMark, and we'd really have a party going!
-castlan
I would not consider FFS definitively faster than Ext2, because softupdates aren't yet considered standard. Softupdates are still be considered less stable than vanilla FFS, though I won't claim that Softupdates make FFS less stable than Ext2. I'd only argue that FFS + softupdates should be considered distinct, much like Ext2 + journaling is considered a distinct Ext3. I do believe that it should have been called Ext2j, as it really isn't different enough to warrant a new number, but that's my unqualified offtopic opinion. Right, Linux does tend to favor performance over stability, which while a negative tradeoff, does pronpt my doubt of any "solid hands down" judgement when it comes to performance.
You are also correct in that the performance of the BeOS is independant of its boot time, but not for the reasons you state. Personally, I don't find that Windows 95/98 boots noticeably faster than NT/2000. Without Citrix, it's hard to consider NT multiuser, and completing BeOS multiuser would take much less work then NT did. BeOS is more like Windows NT then Windows 95, in more ways than one, from memory protection to kernel architecture. While it was released as a single user OS, it had multiuser foundations that Be never prioritized enough to activate, much like the GUI was designed to be network aware (like X), even though it wasn't utilized. It had full file and memory protection, but the standard user was always root. You must not have been paying very much attention to say that the BeOS didn't have multitasking _anything_. I have read complaints from BeOS developers that the BeOS was forcibly "too pervasively" multithreaded" (multitasking) in just about every aspect, from the Gui to the filesystem. "Threads" had to be grouped into "teams" just to make applications manageable (pain in the ass killing 6 threads individually if your word processor hangs). You needed to get a Slay utility because kill -9 was too thread specific. A significant difference (that severely fouled my attempts to compile BASH from source) was the completely non-standard (read: non-POSIX) threading and process priority system.
One positive thing about Be's multitasking and memory protection, was that when it choked on a website (Net+ was a fairly weak browser) it would pop up a dialog box asking what I wanted to do about it. I would push the Dialog to the side, and continue browsing as if nothing had happened until I was finished, sometimes a few hours and a handfull of links later. BeOS never cared, it was much more polite than the Unix standard "kill 'em first, ask questions later" way of killing the app you're using (then Netscape lock file yadda yadda...). Trust me, multiuser/multitasking file and memory protection was in place, even if/bin/su wasn't.
Just let me point out that even if you tweaked FreeBSD to run everything near real-time priority, it wouldn't do much good... you would fairly well cancel out any "near real-time" bonus, as that strategy only works considering the delta between process priorities. Actually, AFAI remember, BeOS priorities ran along a scale around 0-95, with >85 considered "near real-time", and the Idle thread at 0. The GUI ran at "standard priority" of 35, media players ran I think at 45, and Distributed-Net's client ran at 1. Pushing e.g. the desktop thread up too high (near real-time) would reduce performance, as eventually the keyboard task wouldn't get enough cycles to be tolerable, or something else. GUI performance was purely enhanced by the superior multitasking. The main reason that BeOS booted so quickly, was that unlike Windows and most Unices, there was very little in the way of legacy/backwards compatibility. To tweak FreeBSD to match BeOS, forget about priority settings. Even making X really not-"nice" wouldn't match the BeOS' UI qualities. But an especially optimized, low latency Pico-BSD would be a good start, and XFree86 has made major improvements in the multithreading department as well. The biggest limitation at the moment is probably finding a very modular and well threaded WindowManager and GUI environment to run atop it.
Just in case you might care, The OpenBeOS project is using a BSD style license, so perhaps some of their UI might someday come in handy for improving BSD user experience.
As I understand it most car theives take the car to an abandoned lot, and leave it there for at least a few hours. There is too large a risk of having the chop-shop/shipping dock exposed via Lo-jack technology.
As for a Laptop, it's not quite as understood as an automobile, and a non-professional theif probably wouldn't be able to open one without breaking it. Automobile parts tend to be more interchangable then most laptop parts as well. Most computers, especially Laptops (and iMacs) tend to be treated as Unit items.
Too bad I don't have the link, but I recall reading about somebody who had their laptop stolen, perhaps on a train. But within the hour, it was abandoned and he got it back, presumably because it booted to a Linux command line, and was likely considered useless. I guess you have to see the pretty Windows screen to show that it works.
I suppose I wasted my time on the preceding post, it seemed likely that any points of contenetion were to come later. Oh well.
If you as a corporate entity are realeasing Open Sourced code, then the implicit assumption is that you don't have the talent or resources available to make some valuable enhancements to your code base. If you did, then you would keep the code proprietary, and the resources spent would be the investment in a competitive advantage.
All I can really say is "NO". If you are releasing software, either you have some added value to your own version that you are not releasing, or you aren't going to compete using that program as leverage (obsolete, part of a whole, etc). If you don't intend to compete, you won't care if somebody else propritizes it with extras. If you have your own enhancements, you CAN'T use the GPL or you'll be locked out of publicly added enhancements (possibly by your own competitor) or will have to lose your own enhancements to the GPL as well.
Lets go back a step then. I assumed that you were a Proponent of Open Source - are you? Why should you release your code to the public at all? Is there any reason not to just keep all of your code proprietary? If not, then you really should have represented yourself as against Open Source much earlier, so that I wouldn't have wasted my time on the obscure, finer points of discussion.
I suppose I was unclear in continuing the previous train of thought: What was used to compile Apache and NetBSD? Expensive commercial compilers would be troublesome for nacsent projects producing freely available products. While GCC isn't considered part of NetBSD, it is still an important prerequisite to this day.
Not to suggest that Linux or its hype inspires greater longevity than any other GPLed OS... I just wan't aware that there were dozens of other GPLed OSes that failed. Linux was the first kernel available that enabled the GNU OS AFAIK. Aboritive previous attempts that were never completed didn't cross my mind when I made that statement, so maybe you can disprove me. Can you name some failed GPLed OSes that are no longer available? (I won't even ask you to name "dozens".)
If you are willing to further humor me, back into the post-apocalyptic future we go, where all surviving corporations are Free Software hostile. Those depending on FreeBSD derivatives are not contributing back to the lone FreeBSD maintainer. He dies of Radiation poisoning, the the existing Stable version is the last useable OS which is recognizable as FreeBSD. Derivatives just "contain code from" the late, great FreeBSD.
At the same time, The dying Linux maintainer competes his automated Revision Control System, which makes it trivial for those Corps who are still saddled with a Linux foundation to fulfill their duty of resubmitting changes. Various companies are all in sync with the Offical Latest Stable Linux, which by this time is fairly stable and experiences very little feature creep. The few obscure bug fixes made by the remaining corporations are trivial diffs which are automatically applied to a newer, still stable working kernel. The last Linux maintainer dies a horrible death in peace, as existing governments still require that pre-apocalyptic licensing requirements be kept. Companies are careful, thier changes can't be harmful because their continued existence depends of their copy of Linux functioning, which translates in to the official repository functioning. The system is not infallible, as a malicious contributor could make a malicious patch, which would be analagous to a murder-suicide. Except that the next company isn't interested in dying too, so they spend to effort to fix the evil patch purely out of self interest.
I would think that logically, companies would want to avoid the restrictions of the GPL in favor of a less restrictive license - until I realize that the GPL is very permissive compared to many of the proprietary licensing agreements that many companies are still subjecting themselves to every passing day. If I were a company, I would think that I would want absolute control over my product, and avoid ALL licensing that isn't Public Domain, or at least BSD style. I suppose there are non-obvious considerations in-practice.
Section 9 of the GPL states
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
This means that the worst case scenario is that the GPL is no longer a strict Copyleft, $10,000 can buy freedom from the GPL restrictions. Even if this new Proprietary GPL disallowed any redistribution whatsoever, then the GPL v2 would still apply, at your option.
Despite it's potential problems, you may Interested to know that Linux specifies Version 2 of the GPL, so that even if your proprietary GPL became a reality, it wouldn't have any effect on Linux.
You are right, in that those reasons you responded to all apply to Windows over Linux. In the very first paragraph I said "there is primarily one family of reasons why a Linux based operating system would be preferred, followed by a gaggle of reasons that I personally value less at the moment. The family of reasons I refer to have less to do with the Linux kernel, and more with the GNU system that provided a useful place for Linux to nest, gain functionality and eventually popularity superceding the original GNU project. "
The paragraph that you chose to repond to is the very group that I "value less", which is why they were so briefly stated. They are rather unimportant, as technology is always changing. I spent so much time on the long winded part because it is the more important part - in my opionion, that is the answer to your question. The first sentence of the Rant sums it up: Linux is popular for political reasons over technical reasons. Over time, any technical shortcomings can be addressed. the GPL, even if it isn't in all the headlines, is the root of what has unfortunately become the "Linux buzz", as it represents a major shift in the politics of computing. I do apologize for the length... it wasn't strictly necessary. Everything after the first few paragraphs is merely an attempt to support the earlier assertions.
Another way of looking at this: Linux is not technically superior to any other Unix. That does not mean that it isn't more valuable To society. OpenBSD, for example, is a specific tool for people who have a defined set on needs, as is Irix. Linux represents more than just an expedient technical solution.
Might and Magic 1 was probably the best game I had on my AppleII GS. I remember jumping out of my seat and gasping when I first encountered a Beholder. "But that giant purple eyeball thing is taking up the entire viewing window!"
I really haven't played that many RPGs overall, But the Original Gold Box series, AD&D Pool of Radiance was my favorite Commodore 64 game. I really don't think that it could be considered very linear at all. Basically you are free to explore the Area around the town of Phlan, cross a ferry to Sokkal Keep, And then you need to switch to side 7 (on the 4th floppy) which I seem to have lost.... damn, 3 days straight of playing this game, and I'm screwed! I can't hit cancel and go back, I either insert side 7 or... days later, finally turn the damn thing off.
God I kcked myself when I saw that the damn Floppy had slid down the drawer and was flush with the wall... 5.25" floppies can be quite thin.
Well, reading about NeverWinterNights got my hopes up for nothing. I was hoping for a bit of nostalgia here. I still have my floppies for Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, secret of the silver blades. I don't think I ever bought The last in the Gold Box series, Pool(s) of Darkness, which I still Regret. It would have been the $45.99 at Electronics boutique just because those games were so addictive, you didn't need to find anybody willing to be a Dungeon Master after all.
Image my surprise when one day years later I am exploring AOL (In the Days before Internet Connectivity was available) and I find a reference to the AD&D Gold Box Set. It turns out there is another in the Gold Box series, and this NeverWinter Nights is an online game! I can actually play and chat at the same time, in a shared world with other people! We can Team Up, or turn on each other...
I ended up spending at least $100 per month for a few months.... I was quite addicted, and still accustomed to unlimited playing on my solo C-64 version. AOL unfortunately didn't offer flat rate yet, and I wasn't one of those lucky few who Signed on for Lifetime subscriptions with Q-link on the C-64, which later changed their name to America Online...
This is pretty much offtopic, so I'll post under a differnt thread.
It offends my senisbilities when your karma bonus gives You a (Score:2) while an earlier post by mosch is down-modded, despite being the same content presented in a clever format. So I choose to pick your nits, as your post is obviously more valuable. (I am kidding about this, though you might be more deliberate with your bonus next time.)
It seems fairly evident that faster has a specific meaning in the above statement, which is likely not the interpretation you used. The BeOS is fairly well known as a very responsive system, especially the GUI, which helped support its hype about being the "Media OS". It also used the BeFS, as highly performant file system comparable to XFS, as some former SGI engineers were involved in Be's creation. Also, it could conceivably refer to the efficiency when scaled across multiple CPUs. The claim is that BeOS is highly performant with SMP architectures, as it was designed to maximize performance with multiple sub-par CPUs for cost effective power (when 4x500MHz is cheaper than 1x2GHz of the same core CPU.)
For the most likely comparison, GUI responsiveness, The BeOS GUI is such that a text mode display is considered superfluous. The full system with GUI will boot far before any similarly useful installation of "Linux" or FreeBSD on the same machine, even without waiting on XFree86. Be GUI apps will launch in stingy fractions of the time of GNOME or KDE apps, and the managed window will have an independant thread (process) running before the app is launched. Whether it is the toolkit, environment or the implementaion of X11 itself, acting on an X controlled app will tend to lock the interface for other X apps, even niceing Xfree to -10 will only help the responsiveness of the app you control at the time, blocking the other apps. If you have ever tried the BeOS then you will find the quality of the interface smooth when compared to most other systems. with sufficient hardware Windows will also feel smooth, but not as crisply responsive. And don't even try to "outrun" your dragged window... the mouse can tend to get ahead of the window with XFree. The only objection to "faster" is that hardware 3D support was never as widespread, so OpenGL performance was CPU bound.
As for the File System, is FreeBSD's FFS faster then Linux's EXT2? I don't think so. Even using EXT2 on FreeBSD isn't as performanct, even if there is a good reason (Linux writes asynchronously in a haphazard manner). BeFS performance felt rather good, I'd need to see some benchmarks to believe that Linux, much less FreeBSD was "faster" with disk access. Is is likely that with SoftUpdates enabled FreeBSD files can be deleted faster than with Linux or maybe even BeOS, but that is of much less value than BeOS's innovative use of metadata to perform neraly instant file queries, and the metadata journal which allows for trivial boot times, despite unsafe shutdowns. It would be interesting to devise a benchmark for filesystem journal performance. It would likely involve huge disk volumes, which reminds me, BeFS has XFS like 64 bit theoretical volume capacity. While BeFS hasn't been stress tested quite as fully as XFS on IRIX, it is more than likely capable of scaling beyond FFS, and XFS on Linux (which is limited by Linux VFS interface).
As for SMP scalability, BeOS beats Linux 2.2 and FreeBSD hands down. I know of no benchmark comparing BeOS to Linux 2.4.x, but to even consider FreeBSD's SMPng would compromise most of the other advantages FreeBSD would have over Linux or BeOS. For this category I have to assume that BeOS beats Linux which beats FreeBSD (so far).
You may refer to my previous post concerning "free", which supports that "FreeBSD may be freer" as opposed to "easily beating" the GPL version 2 which covers Linux. BeOS is less free than both, though there is the freely available FreeBeOS. There is also an OpenBeOS reimplementation project in the works, which is addressing this issue.
Easier is subjective at best here, though there are some distributions of Linux which have a simplified installation which is far easier than FreeBSD. Administration is another matter altogether, FreeBSD tends to be better in this dept., and in a more universally applicable manner than most Linux Distros, though some may find some Distro specific tools "easier" than raw text files. Ease for the end user is not inherently different between Linux or FreeBSD, both are dependant on administration within the UNIX framework. BeOS, on the other hand, is trivial to operate compared to Unix systems in general.
If you are considering SMP workstation systems, then perhaps BeOS fits better then both Linux and FreeBSD! Of course for single proc or multiuser systems FreeBSD tends to be better then Linux, but since Linux 2.4 it is not an easy win by any means. Perhaps SMPng will outerperform Linux 2.4, maybe even BeOS. But by then, OpenBeOS may well be useable, bringing it back into the running! (Okay, not bloody likely, but that would sure be snazzy!)
If you as a corporate entity are realeasing Open Sourced code, then the implicit assumption is that you don't have the talent or resources available to make some valuable enhancements to your code base. If you did, then you would keep the code proprietary, and the resources spent would be the investment in a competitive advantage.
As an Open Source proponent, you suspect that there are external parties capable and willing to enhance your code - but with a BSD license, you are betting on the fact that none of those parties comprise a competetor, or else you just gave SerpentCorp a competitive advantage. They can make those enhancements, and give you lip service while usurping your profitable prey using their "empraced and extended" EvilViper Plus, with new tighter constriction libraries!
No, you know full well that there are no corporate pretenders to your ViperSuite crown, just foolish mice who will improve your SerpentSoft for free, while you reap the profits. Unless some self-righteous bull... yak?.. no, a GNU comes along and GPLs a the highly valuable Venom function you were counting on, and before you know it the GPLed fork of your program has integrated "Antidote" to the weaker "poison" you included in the original BSD release.
But then again, the GPLed version of ViperSuite is shaping up as a powerful implementation, and even SerpentSoft couldn't outpace the Free Developers, as your original idea was a really good one. Now FreeViper has all of the functionality you need, it is just missing some of your proprietary features. So you still have to release your code with a GPL compatible license, and then work to integrate it into a poorly maintained and undocumented mess of FreeViper. At least you don't have to worry about SerpentSoft eating your lunch, everyone can use your code. Too bad you are playing catchup at this point.
If you had released as GPL in the first place, then you could have maintainted the coherence of the codebase, you project would be available, but you would have the recognized "Official" code base. Linus can take Linux where he wants it to go, and in general, he will be followed. You have the advantages of a deeper insight into the program than any competitors, and you will have meticulous documentation, which only those who pay for "premium" support will have access to.
When you Open Source your valueable but limited program, the important components will be filled in, making your proprietary but "more complete" version less valuable. Unless you are a modern day software superwizard, your code is probably not as valuable as the comprehensive support of it that you can provide once it is deployed.
As a subscriber to the benefits of Open Source, you probably see the value in avoiding unneccesary forks in you code. This is especially true if your talented competition has improved your project. As a BSD licensed Open Source product, your competition has no incentive to release their improvements, just a reduced cost of entry in becoming your competetor, and the abaility to hit the ground running. As GPLed code, your creative competetors' code, if ever distributed, will be available to enrich your product. I have read anecdotes where A company has released code under the GPL by necessity, while their lawyers restricted similar contributions under BSD style licensed products. The bottom line is that there is no justification for contributing code back to BSD licensed projects, only potential liabilities, and they must answer to their shareholders. On the other hand, GPL code can provide a better platform then starting from scratch, at the acceptable cost of contributing enhancements back to the source. It makes good business sense, and helps the Free Software community.
To focus on your two points,
1) Under GPL, their value added features get sent back to you. Under BSD they can usurp your code with a significantly enhaced version.
2)If you publicly release your code, the public one may match or even surpass your proprietary one. A free competetor is not a non-issue, your intention is to keep it a trivial contender. The oversight is that you only control half the equation at this point. With a full GPL release you remain within a maintinable delta of any OTHER version, and simultaneously decimate the value of any pre-existing competition. You then have the leverage of controlling the "official" public product.
A very clever Slashdot.sig says "Information wants to be anthropomorphized." The GPL and the BSDL are tools, they are not friendly. The clever corporation will find an entepreneurial use for them.
As for Free Software Licenses, neither BSD style Licenses nor the GPL do much to protect the interests of the individual coder. The point is that the GPL is trying to protect (your) community of individuals, and the freedoms of human society in general againt private interests - advancing civilization without repressing individuals. With BSD styles, you reserve the right to privatize your code at a later date.
As for the harsh realities of today's corporate environment, there may be a good reason to Free Software license your useful code, even without humanitarian intentions. In a hiring situation, having publicly released useful code can be as good as a reference, and differentiate you from somebody who is similarly qualified. If you used a BSD style license, then there is a greater chance that they might even be using your code. If you are looking for a job, then what better contact could you have then a company that is already using your code! Just point at your name on their product's Copyright Statement, and you become very valuable. Then they brib- er, pay you generously, and your valueable software can potentially become a competitive advantage of their company, especially if it hasn't been widely distributed yet.
Of course, maybe you don't need such leverages. But don't discount the practical value of public recognition.
Linux is an afterthought, granted. What were early versions of Apache compiled in? GNU was fundamental to the freedom of NetBSD, which begat OpenBSD, which begat OpenSSH.
I suppose I am playing the devils advocate here, but I must also point out that Linux is here to stay. I just hope the buzz isn't. As long as there is a core team willing to maintain each BSD as free and relevant (current), then they will remain free. In the sci-fi post apocalyptic future, when only corporate entities have interest in maintaining BSD kernels, they will mutate into horribly disfigured proprietary mutants. Assuming that governments enforcing Intellectual Property are more resillient than Free, Open 'Net-using BSD maintainers, Linux will remain the horribly disfigured yet free mutant kernel that it is today.
To answer your question, there is primarily one family of reasons why a Linux based operating system would be preferred, followed by a gaggle of reasons that I personally value less at the moment. The family of reasons I refer to have less to do with the Linux kernel, and more with the GNU system that provided a useful place for Linux to nest, gain functionality and eventually popularity superceding the original GNU project.
Uh-oh, I think I smell a rant! Unfortunately, that is very difficult to avoid when politics enters into the discussion...
RANT WARNING. I do address the post, stay generally on topic and try to be balanced, but there is much to follow. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Yes, the primary reason is for Linux's popularity is political, as a backlash against a proprietary system that has kept UNIX obscure, and made Microsoft "Industry standard". The GNU Copyleft is a preemptive strike (innoculation) against the viral "embrace and extend" technique perfected by Microsoft. BSD licensing is less restrictive than the GPL, but also less resistant to being made proprietary. The value of this is rather objective, and tends to align with your perspectives regarding the value of large corporations like Nike, McDonalds and other targets of Bleeding Heart Liberals.
Of course as long as there are people willing to keep *BSD up-to-date, secure and generally relevant, Microsoft and the like don't have the resources (cash) to feasibly destroy the free availabilty of the respective BSDs. In the case that any Supercorp ever made withholding Free Software Operating Systems from the public a top priority, the GPL is an attempt to enlist the aid of Copyright Law, to effectively say that "your money is no good" for denying this freedom.
Hopefully the above wasn't too offensive.
As for most of your points, Linux isn't an Operating System, it is a kernel. In general your points are on the mark, as "The 3 Free Software BSDs" tend to excel in the criteria that you mention over most other Free Software (GNU/)Linux distributions. To rebut, I'd have to concede that the Linux Kernel isn't as stable as the *BSDs, in that change counters stability. For a fair comparison, you would need to look at the Kernel used by the various distributions, and see that they tend to stay behind Kernel.org's latest release. As others have posted, Redhat has stayed behind with their kernels to maintain stability. Debian tends to backport fixes from newer kernels to maintain even greater stability, which causes to their most frequent criticism - despite the ease with which one can install more featureful (newer, less stable) packages. It could be argued (to the point of absurdity) that the "Bo" release of Debian Gnu/Linux is more stable than OpenBSD 3.0. Stability is only valuable in that the flaws of a system are better known...
Which leads to the next point... security. OpenBSD has dealt with the UNIX security model long enough that there aren't many surprises waiting to bite them in the ass. The tradeoff is that innovation is contrained by the dated decades old Security Model. Even though Windows (NT) may be less stable, it has a slightly more robust security model, as does Netware and various forms of Unix which implement ACLs, which are not part of the UNIX Security Model. Linux proper has not innovated quite as much as it could have, but again, most distributions keep their own Linux tree. Trustix and NSA patched versions of Linux Operating Systems are available, which tend to be more receptive to additions which defy the UNIX framework, which may end up being more secure. Of course FreeBSD does have their "Trusted" project, and there are more recent OSes that surpass the UNIX Filesystem based security model altogether, look for systems using the "KeyKOS" security model for example. But even *BSD is not the ultimate in stable security, as there are "Big Iron" systems which predate the UNIX era, and may be a better choice for greatest security, stability and maximum effective uptime. It is all a matter of your particular priorities. In practice, Linux has shown itself to be the most flexible Free Software Solution. Of course OpenBSD (Not Net/FreeBSD) is preferable if you are interested in becoming an OS vendor with a proprietary system.
Fastest would have to be the most fickle requirement you listed for hopefully obvious reasons. Your specific requirements could be completely different then mine. FreeBSD is slower when using EXT2 than most Linux kernels, as Linux writes asynchronously. Are SoftUpdates on FFS as stable as standard FreeBSD FFS? What about FFS with SoftUpdates versus XFS? Andreas' or Ric's Linux VM stack? Mach VM or UVM on BSD? I have seen a fairly reasonable benchmark which showed a recent 2.4 Kernel system to be more performant in _most_ aspects when compared to FreeBSD "Stable" on the same hardware when webserving. I have spent too much time on this point.
"The most free" is an unfortunately ambiguous statement. Freedom is a word with transient definitions in modern day America, never mind other nations, eras, etc. Richard Stallman has written extensive treatises on the subject, which are necessesary to address the broad scope of the term. In my logic, "free" should be inextricably linked to "liberty" as there are other words which can appropriately be used in relation to finance and commerce, not so for the "free" as in "the pursuit of hapiness". In this contect, The GPL ensures that GNU/Linux is "Proactively Free". Though you state that Linux is not "the most free", I suspect that you meant that Linux is not "The Least Restrictive" with respect to software developers. Unfortunately, English, as a natural language, is defined by useage more than logic.
Despite all of the above, The FreeBSD core team could be bought. If properly coordinated by a highly resourceful entity, FreeBSD could be legally perverted, and wind up no longer being Free Software. The GPL covering Linux provides legal protections, ensuring that it remains "free", as most governments that enforce Intellectual Property are more expensive than FreeBSD core.
Easiest is highly subjective as well, depending on your particular environment and excpected tasks. You know this, of course, so I won't delineate every possible variation from (Television) set-top box to military simulation environment. But for the average productivity application (l)user, with the average popular computing system Mandrake (Red Hat variant Gnu/Linux), Corel and Progeny Debian are far easier from installation to everyday use. Said user would find most BSDs useless without setting up the Package system. If I wasn't familiar with C Shell from university classes, I would have been lost on my first BSD installation, and forget about (setting up) ports. Red Hat (Mandrake) has much less of the minimalist UNIX philosophy... for better or worse, most everything you could want is considered the "default" install. Progeny (Debian Gnu/Linux) walks you through a standard desktop style install with free Quicken, Excel and Word clones as well, and makes updating you system over the web trivial while still using the excellent APT system for retrieving packages. Even if you feel that GUI interfaces aren't any easier, and you prefer CLI inputs for whatever reason, standard Debian install consists of Hitting the enter key until you are prompted to set your root password and add a user. With the BSDs, you must actually read and comprehend evey screen or you aren't likely to reach the NetBSD/bin/csh prompt which allows you to type
Oh, you mean that MyLinuxDistro isn't as easy as MacOSX? Well, if your list of requirements is all inclusive, then even Darwin isn't as "free" as Linux, Much less Mac OS X.
As for the less political or subjective reasons for choosing Linux, It is more scalable, especially in that it handles SMP better than FreeBSD to date. There are more drivers available for Linux, including non-trivial binary only drivers. There is more commercial support in general for Linux than any other Free Operating System, and more name recognition (media "buzz"). More public attention is given to the desires of users (figure that one out) than the esoteric needs of administrators and developers in general.
There are a variety of of circumstances in which there is a choice of Operating System. If money isn't a primary factor, then Mac OS X > 10.1 is a reasonable platform, and I would love a high end Multi-G4 workstation with a 1600x1024 Flat panel display. OpenBSD is probably the best overall Free Software Operating System for most purposes, though there are situations in which a Debian system (not necessarily Linux!) or derivative may be better suited. With proper infrastructure, including external network security, viral countermeasures and a reasonable support contract, Windows 2000 (all versions, with current patches) is a fairly excellent system, delivering on many of the promises Microsoft has made in the past, very useable yet still having stability comparable to Windows NT 4.0. The standard rule of thumb is to never consider trusting a Microsoft product until at least version 3, point release 1, or multiple "service packs." Despite Windows XP being marketed as more secure, it is not. Windows 2000 was great, but it is for me the end of the line, even if XP ever reaches relative maturity. There are too many fundamental changes, from criminally restrictive licensing, highly disruptive anti-piracy measures, to fundamental subsystem changes that compromise security and robustness by introducing too many unknowns into the system. Windows 2000 is great, other than having fancier eye candy, don't assume anything about XP. I value my American citizenship as more valueable than any benefits of indentured servitude to Microsoft.
If you have actually read this far, I'd like you to specify some of the problems of Linux based OSes, and the rationalizations to which GNU/Linux users cling to that "some of the Windows users clung to not-long-ago. "
Personally, I don't think Linux is the best foundation available for a Free Operating System, but I do feel that I have successfully defended its current dominance. I hope I avoided to much flamage, and sorry about the ranting.
Be has Mozilla, it just isn't considered comletely integrated yet. The BeOS branch has made major progress recently. The main reason that Bezilla hasn't been up to par is that the maintainer didn't have write access to the mozilla tree. You can read all about it here. Seeing as how Mozilla is owned by AOL, this would be trivial if AOL felt it was a priority.
The main thing that BeOS is lacking is a robust printing architecture. Even if you only consider the Open Source technology available that could remedy this shortcoming (there are about five printing subsytems available for GNU systems, various ways of handling PostScript/PDF), then there isn't much work needed to bring this up to spec. At least compared to the work needed to make a simple, complete and friendly WIMP GUI comparable to Mac OS X Aqua or Win32 WinME GUI. Even with the premptive kernel patches, GNOME and KDE on XFree86 feel downright clumsy compared to the BeOS GUI. XFree86 GUIs lack in responsiveness, consistency, and completeness (text shells are available, but superflous) compared to the BeOS gui. Which means it we be much less work for a pleasant User experience at this point in time to use BeOS over RedHat, or even Mandrake.
Just to give Linux based OSes their fair due, I must point out that it is more than feasible to run GNU systems from a CD. ZipSlack can run from a virtual partition contained in a file on a non-EXT2 filesystem, as does FreeBeOS. The Lindows distribution also uses one of these techniques, and AFAIK can run without distrbing your Windows installation. Standard AOL free-disk-in-the-mail marketing would take great advantage of a bootable AOL-OS CD, whether based on BeOS or on a Gnu/Linux OS.
Of course, Gnu has much more marketshare and mindshare, and as many others have pointed out, a behemoth like AOL/Time-Warner can buy a pre-existing company/product easier then they can build a new one. Perhaps this would be a good move for a different national ISP to consider, especially if they have ever had problems related to Microsoft.
The best that you can hope for in a public forum is that "being honest" is the start to a fruitful debate. An alternative is to not state your honest opinion in a public forum, because for whatever reason you feel that it would be better to not debate it. Perhaps your opinion is insignificant, and better not voiced. At the other extreme, trolling is provoking a response that might likely be withheld under better judgement. Some "noble" trolls can see themselves as acting along similar lines to Civil Disobedients or Freedom Fighters, in that they would be catalysts of progressive change. Unfortunately, such trolling requires intelligence and skillful execution, or else it is simply entropy, noise, or akin to arbitrarily "hitting below the belt" without justification beyond lowbrow entertainment.
To prove that your post was not a troll, you should justify your post by shedding some insight into your statement of honesty. You might just enlighten somebody. You claim that Vi sucks for usability, but despite it having one of the worst UIs available, you use it.
Why do you use Vi? What alternative to Vi (or Emacs) provides greater usability? why not utilize the alternative? More to the topic, how exactly do you liken this issue of Linux VM contention to Vi vs. Emacs? Could it be that Like Vi vs. Emacs, the choice of Andrea's VM or Rik's VM is likely to stretch beyond the forseable future, and will generate more useless "heat" then insight and "light", until the entire debate is made moot by a significant change in the text-processing or Virtual Memory consumption habits of society at large?
... or maybe you feel that you will fool somebody by adding a contrary disclaimer to your troll.
Not sure if you really want an answer, but I'll post this and et you decide.
Having too many extra "features" is usually a symptom of poor design. If a feature is added to a product after the initial design, it tends to cause clutter, whether in the interface, or in the program's internal logic (read: source code). If programs have too many features added, then instability is usually introduced along with the loss of clarity. A sign of well planned and executed design is that a program's properties are inherent; it doesn't depend on extra features being added later to make the program generally useful.
A much more eloquent way of saying all of the above, "you know that it is finished when there is nothing else that needs to be taken away" - this imples that a product isn't improved when "features" are added. Rather, when the concept is simplified.
In fact, while I tend to find myself at odds with the "worse is better" philosophy, that is the philosophy that UNIX grew from. A corruption of the "less is more" sentiment, it is how Unix type systems avoid "creeping featuritis." This approach has been relatively successful until Free Software Operating Systems running XFree86 became common. Now huge bloated environments like GNOME and KDE have replaced relatively simple and purposeful Window Managers.
Even if I am using an SGI Onyx 3800 with multiple graphics pipes, multiple MIPS processors, multiple Gigs of Cache-Coherent NUMA RAM and more raw I/O capability than you could ever saturate doing productive work, there are still downsides to using bloated software. Bloated monolithic softare is not as flexible as the combination of simple modular applications that each exhibit stable and consistent behaivor. It is called The Principle of Least Suprise. Bloated monolithic software tends to have more bugs, because the are less stable interfaces to act as checkpoints. Also bloated monolithic sotware would not be as able to take maximal advantage of my killer SGI box, as it would very difficult and complex to have it run in parallel. In contrast, by running modular components in unison, the resources could be distributed more efficiently.
You may have noticed that my bloated paragrphs have been more difficult to read then if I had just made my point in a succinct and compact manner. You may have found, for example, that if one applet in the GNOME dock has locked up or is misbehahving, then the functionality of the entire dock is compromised until the problem with the misbehaving applet is resolved. The problem with bloatware, it that it causes minor problems to compound - to "bloat", if you will - until they have collectively become major problems. As a rule, the larger something grows, the more complex it become. As a system grows in complexity, more errors are introduced.
No matter how powerful your computer's hardware is, it cannot handle logic errors (read: bugs) any better than my 486dx33.
You are more than likely correct that FreeBSD has a larger collection than either NetBSD or OpenBSD. I have heard various references to ports and to packages, and they seemed to be similar but different... I seem to remember NetBSD having ports and FreeBSD having packages, but it could just be the crack rock. I feel somehow dirty poking around for the answer on NetBSD's site using IE, so I was hoping you could regurgitate some fact for me. But thanks anywho.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to defend against your attacks on the character of Mac OS/System x... I do not see how you can question its validity as "a system at all." The irony of your stance is especially poignant when you consider the famous debate between Linus and Tannenbaum, who similarly argued that Linux is a bad system design." The point here is that both Linux and Mac System x are Monolithic, as opposed to the Microkernels that Tannenbaum and the academic community supported.
.o binaries, then Linux would be an unworkable sytem - recompilation is the only saving grace of Linux... the GPL is essential to the survival of Linux in a dynamic hardware platform.
Bear with me on this next point for a moment, if you will. Classic Mac OS, like Linux, tend to be stable systems in general, but due to their monolithic nature, they are can only be as stable as their weakest link. Early Macintoshes were very stable, but they were closed systems. They were very good PCs for their time, but what you call bad system design might better be considered eggregious hacks to support an archaic system. In the long run they hurt the Mac OS, but the useful life of Macintoshes were far greater than Intel peers. Nevermind Windows, I know of Macs that were useful (and used) almost as long as Linux has existed.
The problem is that being a well defined (Mac ROM) and closed system, the Macintosh couldn't really adapt when new ideas in computing were becoming the norm for general consumers. You know, newfangled things like CD-ROMS, 802.2 Ethernet and TCP/IP (for a Personal Computer? No Way!). The crude hack was "extensions", after the fact drivers that played monkey in the middle with the system folders and extended the Mac in ways that it was never designed for. Considering the constraints they placed on themselves, Apple did a fine job, and Macintoshes outlasted generations of Intel PCs, up utill about the time Windows 95 brought half decent attempts at memory protection and a WIMP GUI, finally making 68K Macs less than viable as a primary computer.
As for Apple having almost no experience with OS X, I have to strongly disagree. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs founded NeXT, and NextStep was a stable Unix longer than Linux existed. Steve Jobs is back at Apple, and he brought his Unix with him. Just about all of Mac OS X technologies are stable and well understood systems, from the Mach Microkernel foundation, the BSD based single server and Unix Security model, the Free/NetBSD userland, the Carbon MacOS toolkit, the Mach-o binary, ObjectiveC source, up to the DisplayPDF GUI descended from the NeXT DisplayPostScript system.
Apple hardly had "weak support of their own hardware platform". Rather, their support was so solid, that such concepts of "plug and play" weren't even an issue, that was and still is an Ideal that Microsoft aspired to reach, as all hardware supported by Apple was seamless if you could manage to keep SCSI IDs unique - can you count to 6? Unfortunately, 3rd party hardware, and lazy non-Apple software started to require Extensions to be functional, and that is the straw that broke the camel's back. This is the strongest concrete argument against binary only drivers for Linux... in a mololithic system, drivers step on each others' toes, and instability results. If all Linux drivers were only
As for MS's quality... is it better or isn't it? If my graphics card is poorly "supported", then the fact that "they support a much broader base of hardware devices" is meaningless. Either the hardware you need is supported, or it isn't. PCI is an open standard, and not x86 specific in any way. NuBus devices tended to be more expensive than ISA, but were far better supported (i.e. What is an IRQ? Eeew, why?) The Linux "zoo" environment consisted of Linus' PC. Early users added support for their PCs. This eventually added up to a very populated zoo, but by sheer number of interested users (those frustrated by AST's lack of public leadership for a Free Minix.). This eventually built up a large base of hardware support, but not in the way that you seemed to imply with your zoo metaphor - for the longest time, weak hardware support was considered a very significant Linux flaw. Commercial companies tend not to have individual systems that they can use as a target to port to... they rather port to a class of systems, which seems to be what you refer to with your "zoo" analogy. In this aspect, BSD is much stronger in "zoo" support, as embodied by NetBSD. NetBSD is designed to be very portable, and that is maintained... once hardware is supported for any of the large stable of NetBSD platforms, is it usually supported for all NetBSD platforms. Even in desktop-oriented hardware - NetBSD was the first Free OS supporting USB for eample.
That is not to say that Microsoft is necessarily bad with system design. Windows NT was a very good design, a MicroKernel that IIRC was written on MIPS hardware and then ported to IA-32, just to prove its portability. When NT supports hardware, I have found that the support is usually quite robust. Unfortunately, if graphics hardware support is at all flaky, then the system suffers. As NT is a thorougly graphical platform, MS chose to integrate the Graphics subsystem into the kernel level for performance reasons. This defeats most of the advantages to a microkernel based design. They have also discontinues support for non Intel platforms, which was another Win for Win NT. While these decisions don't significantly impact marketshare, they have severely hurt the integrity of the system. Similarly, Mac OS X and Darwin are based on the Mach MicroKernel, but only implemented as a single server, which is effectively just a monolithic kernel with message passing overhead. And while Mac OS X is limited to PPC hardware, there is at least the potential for Darwin to run on other Mach supported Platforms, especially IA-32.
As for Apple and RISC... the PPC is arguably the weaskest implementation of RISC. More significantly, the point is moot - The RISC/CISC argument is archaic in the face of superscalar architectures. Curent Intel processors don't use the X86 instructions internally, they run microcode similar to RISC style instructions. And the G4 with Altivec is very un-RISC-like. Apple has positioned itself as a hardware company, but their software was always what made their systems valuable. Just because the Mac OS was designed as a single-threaded single-user OS doesn't mean it was a poorly designed system. Remember that it was a full windowing system when Bill Gates was advocating the 640KiB ceiling. Unix running X11 was not feasible without a massive cash investment, and if you had massive cash, you could have bought an Apple Lisa. The Apple Lisa was designed as a multitasking OS from the start, but it was too pricy to have any commercial succes, so Apple pared back the design to create the original Macintosh. In the 80's the limit was not software design but production costs.
Wow, it really looks like I an against every single paragraph you wrote, but at this point I might as well go for broke! Apple realised that their hack upon hack of cutting edge early 80's PC design was unmaintainable, so they tried to maintain backwards compatibility while integrating technology that had become more readily available. You say that they were afraid of Linux as a competetor, but it sems that you are forgetting about their previous Unix on Mach, MkLinux. They didn't fear Linux as a competetor, they actually allocated significant resources into Linux on Mac development for a few years, before BSD was even considered. The issue had nothing to do with any of your imagined "desktop dominance" by Linux, but with the GNU GPL. BSD wasn't chosen so much as NeXTStep. BSD happened to be a foundation for that platform, but more importantly, NeXT BSD was hosted on Mach, so that the MkLinux development effort wasn't a complete loss, they recovered much of the Mach related work. After purchasing NeXT wholesale, they leveraged the Linux inspired hype of "Open Source" without the cost of truly embracing Free Software with their APSL. Marketing Genious building upon many years of Next's technical wizardry.
Your last paragraph missed the point of Linux. It is just an implementaion of POSIX standards. Especially with Open Source and Free Software, anything that runs on Linux runs on Mac OS X by virtue of the POSIX compliance in BSD as well. The only exception is the few binary-only applications which run on Linux while running against the Free Software spirit of Linux. In contrast, in addition to Free GNU software, Mac OS X draws on the large base of existing NeXTStep/OpenStep software and Mac OS software. If Darwin runs on your Mac, then RAM seems to be the only limit or OS X running on your Mac as well. If Mac OS X won't run on your Mac, then LinuxPPC or MkLinux are fine choices. But despite my preference for Free Software, I have to admit that if you can run Mac OS X, then it currently beats Linux hands-down.
I remember in '96 everybody telling me how slow Linux was on the Mac. Of course, that's because MkLinux was all that we knew about.
/etc files as well. Also, the Fink project has ported Apt and "dpkg" to Darwin, for your apt-get goodness needs. The best reason, which admittedly invalidates my last point, is that Darwin comes pre-installed. While this may not seem like that big of an issue for many slashdotters, I find that repartitioninging a Mac is not as easy as the standard Windows based PC:
Native Linux is almost certainly faster than Darwin, a BSD system hosted on the Mach Subsystem. It would be interesting, and possibly valuable to see a proper and thorough attempt at comparing performance of MkLinux vs Darwin. (It seems that MkLinux is only available with Kernel 2.2, though somebody hacked a 2.4 version.)
This might also reveal issues relating to Mach that are distinct from LinuxPPC or NetBSD, which would also make good data points. If time weren't an issue, OpenBSD, Debian and the other Linux Distros would be nice too.
A less technical but still valid issue is that of supporting Free Software. While Darwin is Open Source, it is not "Free", so it is less than ideal for development unless you are specifically targeting Mac OS X. While Linux and the GPL mean that you are forced to support the Free Foftware community if you distribute a derived product, the APSL effectively makes you an unpaid Apple developer, supporting the Apple community, whom in most cases already bought their support from Apple Computer Corp. If you ever tried to made your derived product commercial, you would have to take great pains not to attract the Ire of the big Apple, or your license might be pulled out from under you, and they would have full rights to your product to boot.
Don't get me wrong; I would love to run Mac OS X, but I am not yet ready for the prerequisite hardware investment, my 604 still works. Unless I am trying to hack OS 10 support for my "Mac" (clone), I would not use Darwin as a platform for development without remuneration, preferably from Apple. If I were _really_ determined and talented, I might even attempt to add Darwin interfaces to a Free Software system like NetBSD. (Not that I could... but for the sake of curiosity, does anybody know if Mac OS X makes direct use of the Mach subsystem?)
Of course, the moral issues are more substantial than any technical reasons, right? Theoretically, all technical issues are solved over time. But at the moment, Linux is much better for interoperability, especially in the department of mounting non-native filesystems. Darwin, and AFAIK all of the Free Software BSDs have a paucity of available filesystem drivers.(FFS[nee UFS], Ext2[non-anynchrounously], cdromfs[iso9660], msdos[FAT], LFS[Log structured], and FFS+softupdates) Darwin might only support UFS(really FFS?), HFS+ and cdromfs.
Just to play the devils advocate, Darwin isn't without merit. Debian is dead easy to admin once you know the Debian tools, but before that it might as well be Slackware. Darwin has NetInfo, which is supposed to be very easy to use for administration, and a very powerful centralized tool which may be less of a learning curve than Debian. It is supposed to respect standard
You must be aware of the various system related partitions; pdisk is not as pleasant as cfdisk or even fdisk; there is no lossless repartitioning utility like Partition Magic or even FIPS - you must use a defragmenter to clear a contiguous area from the end of the partiton, alter the partiton table, then repair the "resized" filesystem. The best answer is usually just to buy another hard drive, or just the extant Darwin.
Oh yeah, MOL (Mac On Linux) is worth considering if your Mac (clone) isn't up to running Mac OS X. Does anybody know what ever happened to Sheepshaver? It runs Mac OS under BeOS, and was supposedly ported to LinuxPPC.
-castlan
I took all of the claims of "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" to heart, and killed two birds with one stone!
Practically like getting to vote twice, even if idealism tends to guide my vote While I like Nader, I don't much care for the Green Party. It's too damn bad that Buchanan hijacked the Reform party; I would have enjoyed voting for John Haeglin, even if I was the only one in my region.
Anyhow, I feel that Gore makes a much better voice of dissent then he does a figurehead. I quite enjoyed his more recent speeches.
Now if you want to change Gore to Clinton, then I'd have to agree with you. Perot really shook things up, for better _and_ for worse.
I had a similar experience with my 1541. I was playing Pool of Radiance at the time. My dad sliced the plastic floppy covering to remove the floppy disk media, and propped the floppy casing open with Q-tips so the felt inner lining could dry.
To this day, I still have the cherished 5.25" floppy, resealed in electrical tape. Of course, sides 3 and 4 (on disk 2) are reversed.
I suspect that a nice fresh water dousing would have done some good for your C=128.
My few rediculous 486 cooling experiments haven't fared nearly as well.
Wow. Thank you, I forgot about that issue of "swaying public opinion." I'd have to say that true philanthropy is basically counterproductive in the business sector, so that all commercial examples of your point b) really fall into the broader category of a). To do something in the "public interest" for any viable commercial entity really means to do something to genereate "public interest" in your product. I don't intend this to be a value judgement as much as a simplification.
Just to refocus on your earlier question of "Why Linux?", this related to a specific example of Linux justification from when I worked at SGI: They embraced Linux because it was obviously going to continue becoming more popular (buzz et. al.) so it could be a valuable vehicle to widen acceptance and public interest in SGI technology and methodolgy. I'll admit this was a case where I felt closer to your perspective in preferring the BSD avenue to the Copyleft/GPL, yet it is a real example of an answer to your original question...
To widen acceptance and public interest SGI joined the Linux/GPL buzz when releasing their technologies because it has a noisier buzz than BSD-style Free Softare. So as you point out, this isn't a case of not having the resources to maintain something, but for more effectively using those resources to push your technology into mass acceptance via Free Software. While BSD should technically be more effective due to less restraints in distribution, GPL and Copyleft is at the moment more effective, as a backlash to egregious acts of bad faith from major players in the computing sector. Politics usually effect public opinion more than technological benefits or theoretical limits.
If you don't like 4DWM, you can always use GNOME. .tardist if you aren't interested in source. If you are interested, I'm sure you can find it without me posting the links.
I think that it is available on the Freeware CDs, and is very likely available as a
Perhaps is it too bad that SGI didn't keep (absolute) control of MIPS. They were spun off into their own company, and SGI drew Itanium into their roadmap in a big way, unfortunately. The Origin 3000 family was supposed to offer a choice between MIPS and Itanium, but it looks like Intel delays stopped that from happening, and like you said, SGI was burned. SGI does (AFAIK) maintain a large part of the leadership for the MIPS architecture, so at least they can keep moving.
All of this talk of megahertz is rediculous, especially since gigahertz became reasonable. How often do you realistically max out your CPU? Unless you do some very specific process intensive work, like running a remderfarm, the "MegaHertz Myth" is a moot point.
The reason to Buy a Single CPU SGI workstation, is not for the raw compute power of the MIPS CPU, but for the unmatched I/O capability. This fits in with the target markets of realtime graphics processing, and Huge Dataset Manipulation like Data Mining. XFS is stable and scalable into the Petabyte range, memory Bandwidth is capable of 1.6 GB/sec, and the O2 family offers UMA for effective graphics memory capacity near system RAM capacity.
Just because SGI bus architectures are vital in enterprise/high-compute/multiuser situations doesn't mean that there isn't a need for high bandwidth in (some) workstations.
As for the Alpha, that obviously failed when MS Windows finally dropped support! J/K. Price/performance is much higher with x86 architecture, if you really need Raw Compute, you will get more cycles for your dollar with a farm of commodity PCs. For the record, Athalon systems use the EV(7 if memory serves) architecture, so should have relatively good SMP performance as well. If you need maximum compute per volime (as opposed to per currency) then you would still be best served with an Alpha cluster.
Hope this is useful,
-castlan
According to this screenshot DESKview/X ran Win3.1 Apps in a rooted style, with the win3.1 Desktop in one Window on the X server.
Isn't it common knowledge that Quake3 isn't a CPU limited Benchmark as much as it is GPU/VRAM limited? I would be really interested to see a benchmark comparing Quake3 performance with both systems containing the ATI Radeon 7500, since that seems to be the easiest common ground for Video cards. Also good would be to compare the Single (933MHz if 1GHz isn't possible) versus the Dual G4 model with a Single and Dual P4 and/or Athalon CPU machine. It would be nice to get the latest model of these x86 architecute CPUs, and underclock them to 1GHz, then rebench them at increasing speed to see if/when they surpass the G4 performance. I suspect that they will surpass G4 performance, as Mac Video Drivers aren't likely to be as mature as Windows Drivers. Perhaps a Linux/XFree benchmark would be a good datapoint as well. Of course, Mac OS 9.2 versus Mac OS X 10.1x would also be part of this mix.
The trouble is that a GeForce 4 MX isn't likely a gaming performance type part - The GeForce 2 MX tended to underperform the previous generation GeForce 256 on gaming benchmarks. When the GeForce 4 MX is released for PCs, then a fairer benchmarking could be more plausible.
Then, we could have Netcraft apply the ByteMark, and we'd really have a party going!
-castlan
I would not consider FFS definitively faster than Ext2, because softupdates aren't yet considered standard. Softupdates are still be considered less stable than vanilla FFS, though I won't claim that Softupdates make FFS less stable than Ext2. I'd only argue that FFS + softupdates should be considered distinct, much like Ext2 + journaling is considered a distinct Ext3. I do believe that it should have been called Ext2j, as it really isn't different enough to warrant a new number, but that's my unqualified offtopic opinion. Right, Linux does tend to favor performance over stability, which while a negative tradeoff, does pronpt my doubt of any "solid hands down" judgement when it comes to performance.
/bin/su wasn't.
You are also correct in that the performance of the BeOS is independant of its boot time, but not for the reasons you state. Personally, I don't find that Windows 95/98 boots noticeably faster than NT/2000. Without Citrix, it's hard to consider NT multiuser, and completing BeOS multiuser would take much less work then NT did. BeOS is more like Windows NT then Windows 95, in more ways than one, from memory protection to kernel architecture. While it was released as a single user OS, it had multiuser foundations that Be never prioritized enough to activate, much like the GUI was designed to be network aware (like X), even though it wasn't utilized. It had full file and memory protection, but the standard user was always root. You must not have been paying very much attention to say that the BeOS didn't have multitasking _anything_. I have read complaints from BeOS developers that the BeOS was forcibly "too pervasively" multithreaded" (multitasking) in just about every aspect, from the Gui to the filesystem. "Threads" had to be grouped into "teams" just to make applications manageable (pain in the ass killing 6 threads individually if your word processor hangs). You needed to get a Slay utility because kill -9 was too thread specific. A significant difference (that severely fouled my attempts to compile BASH from source) was the completely non-standard (read: non-POSIX) threading and process priority system.
One positive thing about Be's multitasking and memory protection, was that when it choked on a website (Net+ was a fairly weak browser) it would pop up a dialog box asking what I wanted to do about it. I would push the Dialog to the side, and continue browsing as if nothing had happened until I was finished, sometimes a few hours and a handfull of links later. BeOS never cared, it was much more polite than the Unix standard "kill 'em first, ask questions later" way of killing the app you're using (then Netscape lock file yadda yadda...). Trust me, multiuser/multitasking file and memory protection was in place, even if
Just let me point out that even if you tweaked FreeBSD to run everything near real-time priority, it wouldn't do much good... you would fairly well cancel out any "near real-time" bonus, as that strategy only works considering the delta between process priorities. Actually, AFAI remember, BeOS priorities ran along a scale around 0-95, with >85 considered "near real-time", and the Idle thread at 0. The GUI ran at "standard priority" of 35, media players ran I think at 45, and Distributed-Net's client ran at 1. Pushing e.g. the desktop thread up too high (near real-time) would reduce performance, as eventually the keyboard task wouldn't get enough cycles to be tolerable, or something else. GUI performance was purely enhanced by the superior multitasking. The main reason that BeOS booted so quickly, was that unlike Windows and most Unices, there was very little in the way of legacy/backwards compatibility. To tweak FreeBSD to match BeOS, forget about priority settings. Even making X really not-"nice" wouldn't match the BeOS' UI qualities. But an especially optimized, low latency Pico-BSD would be a good start, and XFree86 has made major improvements in the multithreading department as well. The biggest limitation at the moment is probably finding a very modular and well threaded WindowManager and GUI environment to run atop it.
Just in case you might care, The OpenBeOS project is using a BSD style license, so perhaps some of their UI might someday come in handy for improving BSD user experience.
-castlan
As I understand it most car theives take the car to an abandoned lot, and leave it there for at least a few hours. There is too large a risk of having the chop-shop/shipping dock exposed via Lo-jack technology.
As for a Laptop, it's not quite as understood as an automobile, and a non-professional theif probably wouldn't be able to open one without breaking it. Automobile parts tend to be more interchangable then most laptop parts as well. Most computers, especially Laptops (and iMacs) tend to be treated as Unit items.
Too bad I don't have the link, but I recall reading about somebody who had their laptop stolen, perhaps on a train. But within the hour, it was abandoned and he got it back, presumably because it booted to a Linux command line, and was likely considered useless. I guess you have to see the pretty Windows screen to show that it works.
Lets go back a step then. I assumed that you were a Proponent of Open Source - are you? Why should you release your code to the public at all? Is there any reason not to just keep all of your code proprietary? If not, then you really should have represented yourself as against Open Source much earlier, so that I wouldn't have wasted my time on the obscure, finer points of discussion.
-castlan
Not to suggest that Linux or its hype inspires greater longevity than any other GPLed OS... I just wan't aware that there were dozens of other GPLed OSes that failed. Linux was the first kernel available that enabled the GNU OS AFAIK. Aboritive previous attempts that were never completed didn't cross my mind when I made that statement, so maybe you can disprove me. Can you name some failed GPLed OSes that are no longer available? (I won't even ask you to name "dozens".)
If you are willing to further humor me, back into the post-apocalyptic future we go, where all surviving corporations are Free Software hostile. Those depending on FreeBSD derivatives are not contributing back to the lone FreeBSD maintainer. He dies of Radiation poisoning, the the existing Stable version is the last useable OS which is recognizable as FreeBSD. Derivatives just "contain code from" the late, great FreeBSD.
At the same time, The dying Linux maintainer competes his automated Revision Control System, which makes it trivial for those Corps who are still saddled with a Linux foundation to fulfill their duty of resubmitting changes. Various companies are all in sync with the Offical Latest Stable Linux, which by this time is fairly stable and experiences very little feature creep. The few obscure bug fixes made by the remaining corporations are trivial diffs which are automatically applied to a newer, still stable working kernel. The last Linux maintainer dies a horrible death in peace, as existing governments still require that pre-apocalyptic licensing requirements be kept. Companies are careful, thier changes can't be harmful because their continued existence depends of their copy of Linux functioning, which translates in to the official repository functioning. The system is not infallible, as a malicious contributor could make a malicious patch, which would be analagous to a murder-suicide. Except that the next company isn't interested in dying too, so they spend to effort to fix the evil patch purely out of self interest.
I would think that logically, companies would want to avoid the restrictions of the GPL in favor of a less restrictive license - until I realize that the GPL is very permissive compared to many of the proprietary licensing agreements that many companies are still subjecting themselves to every passing day. If I were a company, I would think that I would want absolute control over my product, and avoid ALL licensing that isn't Public Domain, or at least BSD style. I suppose there are non-obvious considerations in-practice.
Section 9 of the GPL states
This means that the worst case scenario is that the GPL is no longer a strict Copyleft, $10,000 can buy freedom from the GPL restrictions. Even if this new Proprietary GPL disallowed any redistribution whatsoever, then the GPL v2 would still apply, at your option.
Despite it's potential problems, you may Interested to know that Linux specifies Version 2 of the GPL, so that even if your proprietary GPL became a reality, it wouldn't have any effect on Linux.
Cheers!
-castlan
You are right, in that those reasons you responded to all apply to Windows over Linux. In the very first paragraph I said "there is primarily one family of reasons why a Linux based operating system would be preferred, followed by a gaggle of reasons that I personally value less at the moment. The family of reasons I refer to have less to do with the Linux kernel, and more with the GNU system that provided a useful place for Linux to nest, gain functionality and eventually popularity superceding the original GNU project. "
The paragraph that you chose to repond to is the very group that I "value less", which is why they were so briefly stated. They are rather unimportant, as technology is always changing. I spent so much time on the long winded part because it is the more important part - in my opionion, that is the answer to your question. The first sentence of the Rant sums it up: Linux is popular for political reasons over technical reasons. Over time, any technical shortcomings can be addressed. the GPL, even if it isn't in all the headlines, is the root of what has unfortunately become the "Linux buzz", as it represents a major shift in the politics of computing. I do apologize for the length... it wasn't strictly necessary. Everything after the first few paragraphs is merely an attempt to support the earlier assertions.
Another way of looking at this: Linux is not technically superior to any other Unix. That does not mean that it isn't more valuable To society. OpenBSD, for example, is a specific tool for people who have a defined set on needs, as is Irix. Linux represents more than just an expedient technical solution.
-castlan
Might and Magic 1 was probably the best game I had on my AppleII GS. I remember jumping out of my seat and gasping when I first encountered a Beholder. "But that giant purple eyeball thing is taking up the entire viewing window!"
I really haven't played that many RPGs overall, But the Original Gold Box series, AD&D Pool of Radiance was my favorite Commodore 64 game. I really don't think that it could be considered very linear at all. Basically you are free to explore the Area around the town of Phlan, cross a ferry to Sokkal Keep, And then you need to switch to side 7 (on the 4th floppy) which I seem to have lost.... damn, 3 days straight of playing this game, and I'm screwed! I can't hit cancel and go back, I either insert side 7 or... days later, finally turn the damn thing off.
God I kcked myself when I saw that the damn Floppy had slid down the drawer and was flush with the wall... 5.25" floppies can be quite thin.
Well, reading about NeverWinterNights got my hopes up for nothing. I was hoping for a bit of nostalgia here. I still have my floppies for Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, secret of the silver blades. I don't think I ever bought The last in the Gold Box series, Pool(s) of Darkness, which I still Regret. It would have been the $45.99 at Electronics boutique just because those games were so addictive, you didn't need to find anybody willing to be a Dungeon Master after all.
Image my surprise when one day years later I am exploring AOL (In the Days before Internet Connectivity was available) and I find a reference to the AD&D Gold Box Set. It turns out there is another in the Gold Box series, and this NeverWinter Nights is an online game! I can actually play and chat at the same time, in a shared world with other people! We can Team Up, or turn on each other...
I ended up spending at least $100 per month for a few months.... I was quite addicted, and still accustomed to unlimited playing on my solo C-64 version. AOL unfortunately didn't offer flat rate yet, and I wasn't one of those lucky few who Signed on for Lifetime subscriptions with Q-link on the C-64, which later changed their name to America Online...
This is pretty much offtopic, so I'll post under a differnt thread.
It offends my senisbilities when your karma bonus gives You a (Score:2) while an earlier post by mosch is down-modded, despite being the same content presented in a clever format.
So I choose to pick your nits, as your post is obviously more valuable. (I am kidding about this, though you might be more deliberate with your bonus next time.)
It seems fairly evident that faster has a specific meaning in the above statement, which is likely not the interpretation you used. The BeOS is fairly well known as a very responsive system, especially the GUI, which helped support its hype about being the "Media OS". It also used the BeFS, as highly performant file system comparable to XFS, as some former SGI engineers were involved in Be's creation. Also, it could conceivably refer to the efficiency when scaled across multiple CPUs. The claim is that BeOS is highly performant with SMP architectures, as it was designed to maximize performance with multiple sub-par CPUs for cost effective power (when 4x500MHz is cheaper than 1x2GHz of the same core CPU.)
For the most likely comparison, GUI responsiveness, The BeOS GUI is such that a text mode display is considered superfluous. The full system with GUI will boot far before any similarly useful installation of "Linux" or FreeBSD on the same machine, even without waiting on XFree86. Be GUI apps will launch in stingy fractions of the time of GNOME or KDE apps, and the managed window will have an independant thread (process) running before the app is launched. Whether it is the toolkit, environment or the implementaion of X11 itself, acting on an X controlled app will tend to lock the interface for other X apps, even niceing Xfree to -10 will only help the responsiveness of the app you control at the time, blocking the other apps. If you have ever tried the BeOS then you will find the quality of the interface smooth when compared to most other systems. with sufficient hardware Windows will also feel smooth, but not as crisply responsive. And don't even try to "outrun" your dragged window... the mouse can tend to get ahead of the window with XFree. The only objection to "faster" is that hardware 3D support was never as widespread, so OpenGL performance was CPU bound.
As for the File System, is FreeBSD's FFS faster then Linux's EXT2? I don't think so. Even using EXT2 on FreeBSD isn't as performanct, even if there is a good reason (Linux writes asynchronously in a haphazard manner). BeFS performance felt rather good, I'd need to see some benchmarks to believe that Linux, much less FreeBSD was "faster" with disk access. Is is likely that with SoftUpdates enabled FreeBSD files can be deleted faster than with Linux or maybe even BeOS, but that is of much less value than BeOS's innovative use of metadata to perform neraly instant file queries, and the metadata journal which allows for trivial boot times, despite unsafe shutdowns. It would be interesting to devise a benchmark for filesystem journal performance. It would likely involve huge disk volumes, which reminds me, BeFS has XFS like 64 bit theoretical volume capacity. While BeFS hasn't been stress tested quite as fully as XFS on IRIX, it is more than likely capable of scaling beyond FFS, and XFS on Linux (which is limited by Linux VFS interface).
As for SMP scalability, BeOS beats Linux 2.2 and FreeBSD hands down. I know of no benchmark comparing BeOS to Linux 2.4.x, but to even consider FreeBSD's SMPng would compromise most of the other advantages FreeBSD would have over Linux or BeOS. For this category I have to assume that BeOS beats Linux which beats FreeBSD (so far).
You may refer to my previous post concerning "free", which supports that "FreeBSD may be freer" as opposed to "easily beating" the GPL version 2 which covers Linux. BeOS is less free than both, though there is the freely available FreeBeOS. There is also an OpenBeOS reimplementation project in the works, which is addressing this issue.
Easier is subjective at best here, though there are some distributions of Linux which have a simplified installation which is far easier than FreeBSD. Administration is another matter altogether, FreeBSD tends to be better in this dept., and in a more universally applicable manner than most Linux Distros, though some may find some Distro specific tools "easier" than raw text files. Ease for the end user is not inherently different between Linux or FreeBSD, both are dependant on administration within the UNIX framework. BeOS, on the other hand, is trivial to operate compared to Unix systems in general.
If you are considering SMP workstation systems, then perhaps BeOS fits better then both Linux and FreeBSD! Of course for single proc or multiuser systems FreeBSD tends to be better then Linux, but since Linux 2.4 it is not an easy win by any means. Perhaps SMPng will outerperform Linux 2.4, maybe even BeOS. But by then, OpenBeOS may well be useable, bringing it back into the running! (Okay, not bloody likely, but that would sure be snazzy!)
If you as a corporate entity are realeasing Open Sourced code, then the implicit assumption is that you don't have the talent or resources available to make some valuable enhancements to your code base. If you did, then you would keep the code proprietary, and the resources spent would be the investment in a competitive advantage.
.sig says "Information wants to be anthropomorphized." The GPL and the BSDL are tools, they are not friendly. The clever corporation will find an entepreneurial use for them.
As an Open Source proponent, you suspect that there are external parties capable and willing to enhance your code - but with a BSD license, you are betting on the fact that none of those parties comprise a competetor, or else you just gave SerpentCorp a competitive advantage. They can make those enhancements, and give you lip service while usurping your profitable prey using their "empraced and extended" EvilViper Plus, with new tighter constriction libraries!
No, you know full well that there are no corporate pretenders to your ViperSuite crown, just foolish mice who will improve your SerpentSoft for free, while you reap the profits. Unless some self-righteous bull... yak?.. no, a GNU comes along and GPLs a the highly valuable Venom function you were counting on, and before you know it the GPLed fork of your program has integrated "Antidote" to the weaker "poison" you included in the original BSD release.
But then again, the GPLed version of ViperSuite is shaping up as a powerful implementation, and even SerpentSoft couldn't outpace the Free Developers, as your original idea was a really good one. Now FreeViper has all of the functionality you need, it is just missing some of your proprietary features. So you still have to release your code with a GPL compatible license, and then work to integrate it into a poorly maintained and undocumented mess of FreeViper. At least you don't have to worry about SerpentSoft eating your lunch, everyone can use your code. Too bad you are playing catchup at this point.
If you had released as GPL in the first place, then you could have maintainted the coherence of the codebase, you project would be available, but you would have the recognized "Official" code base. Linus can take Linux where he wants it to go, and in general, he will be followed. You have the advantages of a deeper insight into the program than any competitors, and you will have meticulous documentation, which only those who pay for "premium" support will have access to.
When you Open Source your valueable but limited program, the important components will be filled in, making your proprietary but "more complete" version less valuable. Unless you are a modern day software superwizard, your code is probably not as valuable as the comprehensive support of it that you can provide once it is deployed.
As a subscriber to the benefits of Open Source, you probably see the value in avoiding unneccesary forks in you code. This is especially true if your talented competition has improved your project. As a BSD licensed Open Source product, your competition has no incentive to release their improvements, just a reduced cost of entry in becoming your competetor, and the abaility to hit the ground running. As GPLed code, your creative competetors' code, if ever distributed, will be available to enrich your product. I have read anecdotes where A company has released code under the GPL by necessity, while their lawyers restricted similar contributions under BSD style licensed products. The bottom line is that there is no justification for contributing code back to BSD licensed projects, only potential liabilities, and they must answer to their shareholders. On the other hand, GPL code can provide a better platform then starting from scratch, at the acceptable cost of contributing enhancements back to the source. It makes good business sense, and helps the Free Software community.
To focus on your two points,
1) Under GPL, their value added features get sent back to you. Under BSD they can usurp your code with a significantly enhaced version.
2)If you publicly release your code, the public one may match or even surpass your proprietary one. A free competetor is not a non-issue, your intention is to keep it a trivial contender. The oversight is that you only control half the equation at this point. With a full GPL release you remain within a maintinable delta of any OTHER version, and simultaneously decimate the value of any pre-existing competition. You then have the leverage of controlling the "official" public product.
A very clever Slashdot
-castlan
As for Free Software Licenses, neither BSD style Licenses nor the GPL do much to protect the interests of the individual coder. The point is that the GPL is trying to protect (your) community of individuals, and the freedoms of human society in general againt private interests - advancing civilization without repressing individuals. With BSD styles, you reserve the right to privatize your code at a later date.
As for the harsh realities of today's corporate environment, there may be a good reason to Free Software license your useful code, even without humanitarian intentions. In a hiring situation, having publicly released useful code can be as good as a reference, and differentiate you from somebody who is similarly qualified. If you used a BSD style license, then there is a greater chance that they might even be using your code. If you are looking for a job, then what better contact could you have then a company that is already using your code! Just point at your name on their product's Copyright Statement, and you become very valuable. Then they brib- er, pay you generously, and your valueable software can potentially become a competitive advantage of their company, especially if it hasn't been widely distributed yet.
Of course, maybe you don't need such leverages. But don't discount the practical value of public recognition.
Linux is an afterthought, granted. What were early versions of Apache compiled in? GNU was fundamental to the freedom of NetBSD, which begat OpenBSD, which begat OpenSSH.
I suppose I am playing the devils advocate here, but I must also point out that Linux is here to stay. I just hope the buzz isn't. As long as there is a core team willing to maintain each BSD as free and relevant (current), then they will remain free. In the sci-fi post apocalyptic future, when only corporate entities have interest in maintaining BSD kernels, they will mutate into horribly disfigured proprietary mutants. Assuming that governments enforcing Intellectual Property are more resillient than Free, Open 'Net-using BSD maintainers, Linux will remain the horribly disfigured yet free mutant kernel that it is today.
To answer your question, there is primarily one family of reasons why a Linux based operating system would be preferred, followed by a gaggle of reasons that I personally value less at the moment. The family of reasons I refer to have less to do with the Linux kernel, and more with the GNU system that provided a useful place for Linux to nest, gain functionality and eventually popularity superceding the original GNU project.
/bin/csh prompt which allows you to type
Uh-oh, I think I smell a rant! Unfortunately, that is very difficult to avoid when politics enters into the discussion...
RANT WARNING. I do address the post, stay generally on topic and try to be balanced, but there is much to follow. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Yes, the primary reason is for Linux's popularity is political, as a backlash against a proprietary system that has kept UNIX obscure, and made Microsoft "Industry standard". The GNU Copyleft is a preemptive strike (innoculation) against the viral "embrace and extend" technique perfected by Microsoft. BSD licensing is less restrictive than the GPL, but also less resistant to being made proprietary. The value of this is rather objective, and tends to align with your perspectives regarding the value of large corporations like Nike, McDonalds and other targets of Bleeding Heart Liberals.
Of course as long as there are people willing to keep *BSD up-to-date, secure and generally relevant, Microsoft and the like don't have the resources (cash) to feasibly destroy the free availabilty of the respective BSDs. In the case that any Supercorp ever made withholding Free Software Operating Systems from the public a top priority, the GPL is an attempt to enlist the aid of Copyright Law, to effectively say that "your money is no good" for denying this freedom.
Hopefully the above wasn't too offensive.
As for most of your points, Linux isn't an Operating System, it is a kernel. In general your points are on the mark, as "The 3 Free Software BSDs" tend to excel in the criteria that you mention over most other Free Software (GNU/)Linux distributions. To rebut, I'd have to concede that the Linux Kernel isn't as stable as the *BSDs, in that change counters stability. For a fair comparison, you would need to look at the Kernel used by the various distributions, and see that they tend to stay behind Kernel.org's latest release. As others have posted, Redhat has stayed behind with their kernels to maintain stability. Debian tends to backport fixes from newer kernels to maintain even greater stability, which causes to their most frequent criticism - despite the ease with which one can install more featureful (newer, less stable) packages. It could be argued (to the point of absurdity) that the "Bo" release of Debian Gnu/Linux is more stable than OpenBSD 3.0. Stability is only valuable in that the flaws of a system are better known...
Which leads to the next point... security. OpenBSD has dealt with the UNIX security model long enough that there aren't many surprises waiting to bite them in the ass. The tradeoff is that innovation is contrained by the dated decades old Security Model. Even though Windows (NT) may be less stable, it has a slightly more robust security model, as does Netware and various forms of Unix which implement ACLs, which are not part of the UNIX Security Model. Linux proper has not innovated quite as much as it could have, but again, most distributions keep their own Linux tree. Trustix and NSA patched versions of Linux Operating Systems are available, which tend to be more receptive to additions which defy the UNIX framework, which may end up being more secure. Of course FreeBSD does have their "Trusted" project, and there are more recent OSes that surpass the UNIX Filesystem based security model altogether, look for systems using the "KeyKOS" security model for example. But even *BSD is not the ultimate in stable security, as there are "Big Iron" systems which predate the UNIX era, and may be a better choice for greatest security, stability and maximum effective uptime. It is all a matter of your particular priorities. In practice, Linux has shown itself to be the most flexible Free Software Solution. Of course OpenBSD (Not Net/FreeBSD) is preferable if you are interested in becoming an OS vendor with a proprietary system.
Fastest would have to be the most fickle requirement you listed for hopefully obvious reasons. Your specific requirements could be completely different then mine. FreeBSD is slower when using EXT2 than most Linux kernels, as Linux writes asynchronously. Are SoftUpdates on FFS as stable as standard FreeBSD FFS? What about FFS with SoftUpdates versus XFS? Andreas' or Ric's Linux VM stack? Mach VM or UVM on BSD? I have seen a fairly reasonable benchmark which showed a recent 2.4 Kernel system to be more performant in _most_ aspects when compared to FreeBSD "Stable" on the same hardware when webserving. I have spent too much time on this point.
"The most free" is an unfortunately ambiguous statement. Freedom is a word with transient definitions in modern day America, never mind other nations, eras, etc. Richard Stallman has written extensive treatises on the subject, which are necessesary to address the broad scope of the term. In my logic, "free" should be inextricably linked to "liberty" as there are other words which can appropriately be used in relation to finance and commerce, not so for the "free" as in "the pursuit of hapiness". In this contect, The GPL ensures that GNU/Linux is "Proactively Free". Though you state that Linux is not "the most free", I suspect that you meant that Linux is not "The Least Restrictive" with respect to software developers. Unfortunately, English, as a natural language, is defined by useage more than logic.
Despite all of the above, The FreeBSD core team could be bought. If properly coordinated by a highly resourceful entity, FreeBSD could be legally perverted, and wind up no longer being Free Software. The GPL covering Linux provides legal protections, ensuring that it remains "free", as most governments that enforce Intellectual Property are more expensive than FreeBSD core.
Easiest is highly subjective as well, depending on your particular environment and excpected tasks. You know this, of course, so I won't delineate every possible variation from (Television) set-top box to military simulation environment. But for the average productivity application (l)user, with the average popular computing system Mandrake (Red Hat variant Gnu/Linux), Corel and Progeny Debian are far easier from installation to everyday use. Said user would find most BSDs useless without setting up the Package system. If I wasn't familiar with C Shell from university classes, I would have been lost on my first BSD installation, and forget about (setting up) ports. Red Hat (Mandrake) has much less of the minimalist UNIX philosophy... for better or worse, most everything you could want is considered the "default" install. Progeny (Debian Gnu/Linux) walks you through a standard desktop style install with free Quicken, Excel and Word clones as well, and makes updating you system over the web trivial while still using the excellent APT system for retrieving packages. Even if you feel that GUI interfaces aren't any easier, and you prefer CLI inputs for whatever reason, standard Debian install consists of Hitting the enter key until you are prompted to set your root password and add a user. With the BSDs, you must actually read and comprehend evey screen or you aren't likely to reach the NetBSD
% useradd luser -G wheel -v -m ; passwd -l luser
> (this_IS-easy!)
% passwd
> 4_A_n3wb13!
Oh, you mean that MyLinuxDistro isn't as easy as MacOSX? Well, if your list of requirements is all inclusive, then even Darwin isn't as "free" as Linux, Much less Mac OS X.
As for the less political or subjective reasons for choosing Linux, It is more scalable, especially in that it handles SMP better than FreeBSD to date. There are more drivers available for Linux, including non-trivial binary only drivers. There is more commercial support in general for Linux than any other Free Operating System, and more name recognition (media "buzz"). More public attention is given to the desires of users (figure that one out) than the esoteric needs of administrators and developers in general.
There are a variety of of circumstances in which there is a choice of Operating System. If money isn't a primary factor, then Mac OS X > 10.1 is a reasonable platform, and I would love a high end Multi-G4 workstation with a 1600x1024 Flat panel display. OpenBSD is probably the best overall Free Software Operating System for most purposes, though there are situations in which a Debian system (not necessarily Linux!) or derivative may be better suited. With proper infrastructure, including external network security, viral countermeasures and a reasonable support contract, Windows 2000 (all versions, with current patches) is a fairly excellent system, delivering on many of the promises Microsoft has made in the past, very useable yet still having stability comparable to Windows NT 4.0. The standard rule of thumb is to never consider trusting a Microsoft product until at least version 3, point release 1, or multiple "service packs." Despite Windows XP being marketed as more secure, it is not. Windows 2000 was great, but it is for me the end of the line, even if XP ever reaches relative maturity. There are too many fundamental changes, from criminally restrictive licensing, highly disruptive anti-piracy measures, to fundamental subsystem changes that compromise security and robustness by introducing too many unknowns into the system. Windows 2000 is great, other than having fancier eye candy, don't assume anything about XP. I value my American citizenship as more valueable than any benefits of indentured servitude to Microsoft.
If you have actually read this far, I'd like you to specify some of the problems of Linux based OSes, and the rationalizations to which GNU/Linux users cling to that "some of the Windows users clung to not-long-ago. "
Personally, I don't think Linux is the best foundation available for a Free Operating System, but I do feel that I have successfully defended its current dominance. I hope I avoided to much flamage, and sorry about the ranting.
-castlan
Be has Mozilla, it just isn't considered comletely integrated yet. The BeOS branch has made major progress recently. The main reason that Bezilla hasn't been up to par is that the maintainer didn't have write access to the mozilla tree. You can read all about it here. Seeing as how Mozilla is owned by AOL, this would be trivial if AOL felt it was a priority.
The main thing that BeOS is lacking is a robust printing architecture. Even if you only consider the Open Source technology available that could remedy this shortcoming (there are about five printing subsytems available for GNU systems, various ways of handling PostScript/PDF), then there isn't much work needed to bring this up to spec. At least compared to the work needed to make a simple, complete and friendly WIMP GUI comparable to Mac OS X Aqua or Win32 WinME GUI. Even with the premptive kernel patches, GNOME and KDE on XFree86 feel downright clumsy compared to the BeOS GUI. XFree86 GUIs lack in responsiveness, consistency, and completeness (text shells are available, but superflous) compared to the BeOS gui. Which means it we be much less work for a pleasant User experience at this point in time to use BeOS over RedHat, or even Mandrake.
Just to give Linux based OSes their fair due, I must point out that it is more than feasible to run GNU systems from a CD. ZipSlack can run from a virtual partition contained in a file on a non-EXT2 filesystem, as does FreeBeOS. The Lindows distribution also uses one of these techniques, and AFAIK can run without distrbing your Windows installation. Standard AOL free-disk-in-the-mail marketing would take great advantage of a bootable AOL-OS CD, whether based on BeOS or on a Gnu/Linux OS.
Of course, Gnu has much more marketshare and mindshare, and as many others have pointed out, a behemoth like AOL/Time-Warner can buy a pre-existing company/product easier then they can build a new one. Perhaps this would be a good move for a different national ISP to consider, especially if they have ever had problems related to Microsoft.
The best that you can hope for in a public forum is that "being honest" is the start to a fruitful debate. An alternative is to not state your honest opinion in a public forum, because for whatever reason you feel that it would be better to not debate it. Perhaps your opinion is insignificant, and better not voiced. At the other extreme, trolling is provoking a response that might likely be withheld under better judgement. Some "noble" trolls can see themselves as acting along similar lines to Civil Disobedients or Freedom Fighters, in that they would be catalysts of progressive change. Unfortunately, such trolling requires intelligence and skillful execution, or else it is simply entropy, noise, or akin to arbitrarily "hitting below the belt" without justification beyond lowbrow entertainment.
To prove that your post was not a troll, you should justify your post by shedding some insight into your statement of honesty. You might just enlighten somebody. You claim that Vi sucks for usability, but despite it having one of the worst UIs available, you use it.
Why do you use Vi? What alternative to Vi (or Emacs) provides greater usability? why not utilize the alternative? More to the topic, how exactly do you liken this issue of Linux VM contention to Vi vs. Emacs? Could it be that Like Vi vs. Emacs, the choice of Andrea's VM or Rik's VM is likely to stretch beyond the forseable future, and will generate more useless "heat" then insight and "light", until the entire debate is made moot by a significant change in the text-processing or Virtual Memory consumption habits of society at large?
... or maybe you feel that you will fool somebody by adding a contrary disclaimer to your troll.
-castlan
Not sure if you really want an answer, but I'll post this and et you decide.
Having too many extra "features" is usually a symptom of poor design. If a feature is added to a product after the initial design, it tends to cause clutter, whether in the interface, or in the program's internal logic (read: source code). If programs have too many features added, then instability is usually introduced along with the loss of clarity. A sign of well planned and executed design is that a program's properties are inherent; it doesn't depend on extra features being added later to make the program generally useful.
A much more eloquent way of saying all of the above, "you know that it is finished when there is nothing else that needs to be taken away" - this imples that a product isn't improved when "features" are added. Rather, when the concept is simplified.
In fact, while I tend to find myself at odds with the "worse is better" philosophy, that is the philosophy that UNIX grew from. A corruption of the "less is more" sentiment, it is how Unix type systems avoid "creeping featuritis." This approach has been relatively successful until Free Software Operating Systems running XFree86 became common. Now huge bloated environments like GNOME and KDE have replaced relatively simple and purposeful Window Managers.
Even if I am using an SGI Onyx 3800 with multiple graphics pipes, multiple MIPS processors, multiple Gigs of Cache-Coherent NUMA RAM and more raw I/O capability than you could ever saturate doing productive work, there are still downsides to using bloated software. Bloated monolithic softare is not as flexible as the combination of simple modular applications that each exhibit stable and consistent behaivor. It is called The Principle of Least Suprise. Bloated monolithic software tends to have more bugs, because the are less stable interfaces to act as checkpoints. Also bloated monolithic sotware would not be as able to take maximal advantage of my killer SGI box, as it would very difficult and complex to have it run in parallel. In contrast, by running modular components in unison, the resources could be distributed more efficiently.
You may have noticed that my bloated paragrphs have been more difficult to read then if I had just made my point in a succinct and compact manner. You may have found, for example, that if one applet in the GNOME dock has locked up or is misbehahving, then the functionality of the entire dock is compromised until the problem with the misbehaving applet is resolved. The problem with bloatware, it that it causes minor problems to compound - to "bloat", if you will - until they have collectively become major problems. As a rule, the larger something grows, the more complex it become. As a system grows in complexity, more errors are introduced.
No matter how powerful your computer's hardware is, it cannot handle logic errors (read: bugs) any better than my 486dx33.
-castlan
You are more than likely correct that FreeBSD has a larger collection than either NetBSD or OpenBSD. I have heard various references to ports and to packages, and they seemed to be similar but different... I seem to remember NetBSD having ports and FreeBSD having packages, but it could just be the crack rock. I feel somehow dirty poking around for the answer on NetBSD's site using IE, so I was hoping you could regurgitate some fact for me. But thanks anywho.
-castlan