Oh, and by the way, Linux does function as an eminently acceptable desktop.
For me, 2001 was the Year of the Linux Desktop. That's when I switched from Solaris. And why was I running Solaris? Because it had been my desktop for the previous fifteen years.
From my point of view as a working computer scientist, Microsoft was perennially late to the game, perennially full of hot air, and has never - certainly not architecturally - caught up to stuff we were routinely using decades ago.
You're absolutely right. Usually the only people whining about Linux on the desktop are the newcomers that were brought into the technology world being weaned from Fisher Price to Windows or Macintosh. These people have not experienced what a true operating system is, or how one should work, or how one should "feel". I'm not saying that we should all go back to green dumb terminals or back to mid-90's X-Windows - what I'm talking about is the heart of the operating system, how it is engineered and what's under the hood. Things that I take as a norm like being able to delete a file even if its in use, or... get this one: being able to back up a file that's in use. Things like a proper scheduler that allows the system to maintain responsiveness even under load. Things like being able to access a floppy drive without the whole system coming to a halt until the floppy is done. Things like not having to defragment my hard drive every month to keep it "optimal". Things like the system not constantly telling me what I can and cannot do with my own computer. The list goes on and on - things under the hood that should just work.
I can't stand Windows - it frustrates and aggravates me to use it, because to me it just doesn't work. You mentioned that it is like a toy to you and you hit the nail on the head. It very much feels like a toy or a child's plaything to me. It's a shame that people use it, because it takes perfectly good computer hardware with endless capabilities - and locks it down into some dumb, restrictive, bogged down "appliance" that you continually have to keep feeding money.
So, it absolutely functions as an acceptable desktop. To me, it is far more acceptable as a Desktop than Windows ever was. I don't use Windows personally (although I have to deal with it at work constantly - fortunately not as my workstation), and I doubt I will ever personally use Windows. It just does NOT work.
From TFA: An article has come out claiming (yet again) that 2009 will be the year of Linux, and bases this prediction on the fact that low power ARM processors will be in netbooks which won't have enough power to run Windows, but then says these new netbooks will be geared to "web only" applications which suits Linux perfectly. And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too.
In a year that saw Linux netbooks appear, and fail to excite consumers, thus handing Microsoft victory in the netbook operating system space, yet another pundit has come out claiming 2009 will be a revolutionary year for Linux.
The "year of Linux"? Palm "might save Linux"? A "revolutionary year for Linux"?
Does this asshat even know what Linux is? Does he even know what what he's trying to talk about is Linux on the desktop? He goes on talking as if he thinks that if Linux doesn't succeed on the desktop, that it is a failure and that something will need to come along to "save it".
People need to get it through their thick skulls that Linux is a kernel for a unix-like operating system. The primary purpose of Linux is not to become a replacement for the Windows desktop, or to become the latest gadget PDA system. It's purpose is not to be a fancy, shiny, eyecandy competitor for OSX. Its purpose is to be an extremely versatile, scalable, and portable kernel for a unix-like operating system - and when coupled with GNU it becomes a very powerful unix-like operating system capable of pretty much anything.
Linux has succeeded as the number 1 OS of choice for HPC and supercomputing applications. Linux has succeeded as being a very popular OS for Internet-connected servers. Linux has succeeded as being the OS of choice for many embedded systems, home entertainment applications and DVR systems. Linux has succeeded as a powerful development environment.
Linux has succeeded in so many areas that it would be tedious to list them. Primarily, though - Linux has succeeded far beyond anyone's wildest dreams in its original goal: to be a viable monolithic kernel for x86 systems, so that x86 users can enjoy unix.
Linux is not going away, it hasn't "failed", and it certainly doesn't need to be "saved". In fact, since the day GNU/Linux has been available, it has done nothing but grow and increase in usage. And not only has it grown, it's grown wildly... from hacker OS, to mainstream OS, to a laughable nuisance to Microsoft, to a downright huge challenge to Microsoft's vitality in the server market. From where I stand, I've never even seen a dip in its growth. It's only growing more, and it will continue to grow. Linux has succeeded, and will continue to succeed. Just watch.
I know others have said this and it's been argued before, but SMTP as it is right now should be dead. A new protocol should replace it. Yes yes, I know what a huge Herculean feat that would be - but if you look at the effort and $$ the world has collectively dumped into spam control up until this point, to me it just makes sense to start over and gradually replace the old protocol. I'm in the same boat as you, as well as my users... hardly any spam makes it to the inbox, but the damned maintenance on perimeter spam control devices and all the eaten-up bandwidth is just nuts.
vastly greater unfair embarrassment in case the victim's story is false?
This is how I see it:
If an alleged victim's name is published, letting everyone know they may have been raped - the detriment to the victim is that everyone will then know that they'd been raped, which understandably causes a great deal of embarrassment and additional psychological damage to the victim.
If an alleged attacker's name is published, letting everyone know they may have raped someone - the detriment to the attacker is that they are also embarrassed and publicly humiliated (though not at all to the same extent), BUT, they also typically lose their jobs, their families, their friends, and are presumed guilty of the crime and treated as such (innocent or not). In most countries it stays on their record whether they were convicted or not, and typically they have to live with that shame the rest of their lives - whether they did it or not.
I've been able to run Firefox to some extent in a corporate environment and keep it updated - I just create an MSI package whenever a new version of Firefox comes out (3.0.3, 3.0.4, etc) and then roll it out via group policy. Then I just let my users know they should use Firefox for all of their browsing, and use IE only for craptastic activex/VB intranet apps.
You're right though - they really need to make it easier. Keeping plugins, etc updated is impossible.
Right because Apple's so good about offering support for anything legacy? Give me a break.
Like I said, since I'd have to be installing all new applications anyway, they'd hardly be legacy. Macs are not a one-solution-fits-all system, I know that. However, there are some of my customers that would be able to run Macs - as there is software for them that would suffice as a replacement for what they currently have. There are other customers which wouldn't be able to run it at all. A lot of my customers are already running completely on FOSS - I'm just going to have to expand that base. This is the perfect time for it - as everyone and their Aunt Mary is fed up with all things Microsoft. Office 2007 installations were met with anger and frustration due to the changed GUI and performance issues, and Vista was another nail in the coffin.
Sounds like you have a lot of situations where you do system administration for optometrists. I've got a few customers in the optometry/eyecare field - and you're right, their apps are pretty much all provided them by their equipment vendors and distributors. These would be situations where I'd be forced to either make them work on Ubuntu somehow, or just roll out Vista anyway. Problem is - as you may already know - a lot of those apps from the opto vendors don't even work on Vista.
Now is the perfect opportunity for change - and to give all those customers griping about Microsoft fresh alternatives. In a world where everything's made for Windows, change has got to start somewhere.
This is all good for Mac OS X adoption I suppose, but frankly, even though I am a Linux user, my professional life would be much better if Microsoft would either extend the availability of XP or get something better than Vista out the door soon.
I'm running into the same problem. I've got so many customers that are running either specialty or legacy apps that simply will not run on Vista - or they run into stability issues with apps that are supported by Vista. Then, they basically shoot the messenger and make my life a living hell - since I really have no other alternative for them. When I could offer them XP, I could offer them a stable, working solution that they were happy with. Microsoft has stripped me of that option. I really don't see the light at the end of the tunnel with Windows 7, either. To me, it just looks like what the final release of Vista really should have been. Yes, it may be more stable and have better performance - but that doesn't help me when I need to go and install said specialty or legacy apps on it.
I am basically at a crossroads where I have to take a lot of clients into a completely new system, with completely new applications. And let me tell you - after what Microsoft's done, I'm not about to set them up with another Microsoft solution that railroads them into situations like this again. As long as I'm having to redo entire enterprises, I might as well roll out open source solutions or Macs.
The suggestion that having your hand held is a bad thing is just stupid.
I wasn't trying to imply that having your hand held was a bad thing. What I meant was that if you want your hand held, then you shouldn't be looking towards Slackware. There are other distributions that achieve that goal. People that get on and start pissing and whining about how Slackware has a steeper learning curve as a desktop OS just don't understand the spirit of the distribution.
Because I don't have time to compile my OS from scratch, and I don't want to have to recompile it if something goes awry....I'd rather grab the same binaries everyone else is using.
Some people do have the time to compile their OS from scratch. Some people like compiling their OS from scratch. Others see the value in natively-compiled binaries. However, Slackware really isn't like that (as you probably already know). The kernel, basic userland, gcc, libs, etc are already compiled and ready to go. What has to be compiled from there depends on the user's preference.
You mention that you'd rather grab the same binaries everyone else is using, because "that's the value of open source". Well, if you're really and truly wanting to use the same thing "everyone else is using", then you'd be staying away from pre-compiled binaries and use something like Slackware, which stays close to the original source. DEBs are compiled for Debian/Ubuntu systems. RPMs are compiled for RedHat/Suse/etc systems. Those binaries are being used only by those using those distributions. If you download the nmap source from sourceforge - you really ARE using what's being used by everyone else. You're using the nmap source code used to compile binaries on Debian systems, RedHat systems, *BSD systems, Solaris, you name it. You're staying true to the original author's source - and using what everyone else had to use to get theirs running on their platform.
To each their own. That's what my original point all boiled down to. People that complain about the vast variety of distributions and go off like all distributions should be some sort of dumbed-down easy to use desktop OS just don't get it.
"Ubuntu ate my computer" is a great phrase. I've got to figure out how to work it into daily conversation;-)
Well, I successfully found a way to work "circus midgets ate my balls" into most of my daily conversations - so the Ubuntu line shouldn't be too difficult.
"Slackware sucks, it has no package manager." "Slackware sucks, it takes so much time to get an uber elite desktop with avant and spinning cubes." "Slackware sucks, it's so much harder to install than Ubuntu." "Slackware sucks, you spend way more time on the CLI than other distros."
There are still some of us left that don't think the primary goal of every linux distro is to become a clone of the Windows desktop. There are less and less of us left that want to kick the hell out of anyone that thinks the command line should go away or be used as little as possible. Slackware is what it is - a robust linux system that tries to be as unix-like as possible.
If you want your hand held for you, and you don't understand what *nix truly is and can do and don't really care - if all you want is a simple drop-in replacement for Windows - go download Ubuntu. Each distribution achieves a different goal. THAT's the real beauty of linux, not its potential to become "grandma's operating system".
Free software would benefit greatly if "Helios" and Roy Schestowitz beat each other into dumb oblivion
Hear hear.
However, COLA is still one of the groups that entertains me most. Where would I go to get my 15 minutes of side-splitting laughter without Roy and his hillarious flamefest of a usenet group?
The kicker was the 150 hours of community service I had to put in to pay for the time (of 'computer professionals' who were worth a lot more money than I was) it took to bring them back online.
And just think - since most likely all they had to do was reboot the damned things, what you were really putting in your "sweat equity" to pay for was their time to go back and fix their own mistakes, since they obviously hadn't done their jobs right in the first place.
However, this brings up an important rule of thumb: Don't pen test something that you don't have permission to pen test, unless you've accepted that you will be prosecuted if caught. There are a lot of idiot admins out there watching their logs ready to point fingers the moment they see a port scan... not because they're concerned about security, but because "hackers" make excellent scapegoats for incompetent admins.
I always roll my eyes when I hear someone complain about nmap "crashing a system". This should be common sense. If the target crashed simply from being nmapped or scanned from the outside - the target is obviously a turd of a system.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and by the way, Linux does function as an eminently acceptable desktop.
For me, 2001 was the Year of the Linux Desktop. That's when I switched from Solaris. And why was I running Solaris? Because it had been my desktop for the previous fifteen years.
From my point of view as a working computer scientist, Microsoft was perennially late to the game, perennially full of hot air, and has never - certainly not architecturally - caught up to stuff we were routinely using decades ago.
You're absolutely right. Usually the only people whining about Linux on the desktop are the newcomers that were brought into the technology world being weaned from Fisher Price to Windows or Macintosh. These people have not experienced what a true operating system is, or how one should work, or how one should "feel". I'm not saying that we should all go back to green dumb terminals or back to mid-90's X-Windows - what I'm talking about is the heart of the operating system, how it is engineered and what's under the hood. Things that I take as a norm like being able to delete a file even if its in use, or... get this one: being able to back up a file that's in use. Things like a proper scheduler that allows the system to maintain responsiveness even under load. Things like being able to access a floppy drive without the whole system coming to a halt until the floppy is done. Things like not having to defragment my hard drive every month to keep it "optimal". Things like the system not constantly telling me what I can and cannot do with my own computer. The list goes on and on - things under the hood that should just work.
I can't stand Windows - it frustrates and aggravates me to use it, because to me it just doesn't work. You mentioned that it is like a toy to you and you hit the nail on the head. It very much feels like a toy or a child's plaything to me. It's a shame that people use it, because it takes perfectly good computer hardware with endless capabilities - and locks it down into some dumb, restrictive, bogged down "appliance" that you continually have to keep feeding money.
So, it absolutely functions as an acceptable desktop. To me, it is far more acceptable as a Desktop than Windows ever was. I don't use Windows personally (although I have to deal with it at work constantly - fortunately not as my workstation), and I doubt I will ever personally use Windows. It just does NOT work.
From TFA:
An article has come out claiming (yet again) that 2009 will be the year of Linux, and bases this prediction on the fact that low power ARM processors will be in netbooks which won't have enough power to run Windows, but then says these new netbooks will be geared to "web only" applications which suits Linux perfectly. And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too.
In a year that saw Linux netbooks appear, and fail to excite consumers, thus handing Microsoft victory in the netbook operating system space, yet another pundit has come out claiming 2009 will be a revolutionary year for Linux.
The "year of Linux"?
Palm "might save Linux"?
A "revolutionary year for Linux"?
Does this asshat even know what Linux is? Does he even know what what he's trying to talk about is Linux on the desktop? He goes on talking as if he thinks that if Linux doesn't succeed on the desktop, that it is a failure and that something will need to come along to "save it".
People need to get it through their thick skulls that Linux is a kernel for a unix-like operating system. The primary purpose of Linux is not to become a replacement for the Windows desktop, or to become the latest gadget PDA system. It's purpose is not to be a fancy, shiny, eyecandy competitor for OSX. Its purpose is to be an extremely versatile, scalable, and portable kernel for a unix-like operating system - and when coupled with GNU it becomes a very powerful unix-like operating system capable of pretty much anything.
Linux has succeeded as the number 1 OS of choice for HPC and supercomputing applications.
Linux has succeeded as being a very popular OS for Internet-connected servers.
Linux has succeeded as being the OS of choice for many embedded systems, home entertainment applications and DVR systems.
Linux has succeeded as a powerful development environment.
Linux has succeeded in so many areas that it would be tedious to list them. Primarily, though - Linux has succeeded far beyond anyone's wildest dreams in its original goal: to be a viable monolithic kernel for x86 systems, so that x86 users can enjoy unix.
Linux is not going away, it hasn't "failed", and it certainly doesn't need to be "saved". In fact, since the day GNU/Linux has been available, it has done nothing but grow and increase in usage. And not only has it grown, it's grown wildly... from hacker OS, to mainstream OS, to a laughable nuisance to Microsoft, to a downright huge challenge to Microsoft's vitality in the server market. From where I stand, I've never even seen a dip in its growth. It's only growing more, and it will continue to grow. Linux has succeeded, and will continue to succeed. Just watch.
Heh. You guys thought they took it offline because it had a little glitch.
derr... AND
My wife says I have flatulent frontal temporal lobes.
I know others have said this and it's been argued before, but SMTP as it is right now should be dead. A new protocol should replace it. Yes yes, I know what a huge Herculean feat that would be - but if you look at the effort and $$ the world has collectively dumped into spam control up until this point, to me it just makes sense to start over and gradually replace the old protocol. I'm in the same boat as you, as well as my users... hardly any spam makes it to the inbox, but the damned maintenance on perimeter spam control devices and all the eaten-up bandwidth is just nuts.
Another example of why legislators shouldn't attempt solve problems that should be left to engineers.
For example:
Best home network NAS?
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/21/141244&from=rss
What NAS to buy?
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/30/1411229
Building a Fully Encrypted NAS On OpenBSD
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/16/002203
Does ZFS Obsolete Expensive NAS/SANs?
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/30/0135218
What the hell? Is this the new quarterly NAS discussion?
Whhooooooossshh...
vastly greater unfair embarrassment in case the victim's story is false?
This is how I see it:
If an alleged victim's name is published, letting everyone know they may have been raped - the detriment to the victim is that everyone will then know that they'd been raped, which understandably causes a great deal of embarrassment and additional psychological damage to the victim.
If an alleged attacker's name is published, letting everyone know they may have raped someone - the detriment to the attacker is that they are also embarrassed and publicly humiliated (though not at all to the same extent), BUT, they also typically lose their jobs, their families, their friends, and are presumed guilty of the crime and treated as such (innocent or not). In most countries it stays on their record whether they were convicted or not, and typically they have to live with that shame the rest of their lives - whether they did it or not.
Do you see the difference?
I was raped on the Internet. My Karma went from Excellent to Terrible due to one post.
I don't know... that's kind of a Bad Analogy.
I've been able to run Firefox to some extent in a corporate environment and keep it updated - I just create an MSI package whenever a new version of Firefox comes out (3.0.3, 3.0.4, etc) and then roll it out via group policy. Then I just let my users know they should use Firefox for all of their browsing, and use IE only for craptastic activex/VB intranet apps.
You're right though - they really need to make it easier. Keeping plugins, etc updated is impossible.
Since you mentioned it, I think Emacs is my favorite desktop manager. It's also my favorite CAD program.
Right because Apple's so good about offering support for anything legacy? Give me a break.
Like I said, since I'd have to be installing all new applications anyway, they'd hardly be legacy. Macs are not a one-solution-fits-all system, I know that. However, there are some of my customers that would be able to run Macs - as there is software for them that would suffice as a replacement for what they currently have. There are other customers which wouldn't be able to run it at all. A lot of my customers are already running completely on FOSS - I'm just going to have to expand that base. This is the perfect time for it - as everyone and their Aunt Mary is fed up with all things Microsoft. Office 2007 installations were met with anger and frustration due to the changed GUI and performance issues, and Vista was another nail in the coffin.
Sounds like you have a lot of situations where you do system administration for optometrists. I've got a few customers in the optometry/eyecare field - and you're right, their apps are pretty much all provided them by their equipment vendors and distributors. These would be situations where I'd be forced to either make them work on Ubuntu somehow, or just roll out Vista anyway. Problem is - as you may already know - a lot of those apps from the opto vendors don't even work on Vista.
Now is the perfect opportunity for change - and to give all those customers griping about Microsoft fresh alternatives. In a world where everything's made for Windows, change has got to start somewhere.
Better yet just post on Slashdot in binary, then you'd really be getting your e-penis on.
01010011 01010101 01000011 01001011 00100000 01001001 01010100
This is all good for Mac OS X adoption I suppose, but frankly, even though I am a Linux user, my professional life would be much better if Microsoft would either extend the availability of XP or get something better than Vista out the door soon.
I'm running into the same problem. I've got so many customers that are running either specialty or legacy apps that simply will not run on Vista - or they run into stability issues with apps that are supported by Vista. Then, they basically shoot the messenger and make my life a living hell - since I really have no other alternative for them. When I could offer them XP, I could offer them a stable, working solution that they were happy with. Microsoft has stripped me of that option. I really don't see the light at the end of the tunnel with Windows 7, either. To me, it just looks like what the final release of Vista really should have been. Yes, it may be more stable and have better performance - but that doesn't help me when I need to go and install said specialty or legacy apps on it.
I am basically at a crossroads where I have to take a lot of clients into a completely new system, with completely new applications. And let me tell you - after what Microsoft's done, I'm not about to set them up with another Microsoft solution that railroads them into situations like this again. As long as I'm having to redo entire enterprises, I might as well roll out open source solutions or Macs.
The suggestion that having your hand held is a bad thing is just stupid.
I wasn't trying to imply that having your hand held was a bad thing. What I meant was that if you want your hand held, then you shouldn't be looking towards Slackware. There are other distributions that achieve that goal. People that get on and start pissing and whining about how Slackware has a steeper learning curve as a desktop OS just don't understand the spirit of the distribution.
Because I don't have time to compile my OS from scratch, and I don't want to have to recompile it if something goes awry....I'd rather grab the same binaries everyone else is using.
Some people do have the time to compile their OS from scratch. Some people like compiling their OS from scratch. Others see the value in natively-compiled binaries. However, Slackware really isn't like that (as you probably already know). The kernel, basic userland, gcc, libs, etc are already compiled and ready to go. What has to be compiled from there depends on the user's preference.
You mention that you'd rather grab the same binaries everyone else is using, because "that's the value of open source". Well, if you're really and truly wanting to use the same thing "everyone else is using", then you'd be staying away from pre-compiled binaries and use something like Slackware, which stays close to the original source. DEBs are compiled for Debian/Ubuntu systems. RPMs are compiled for RedHat/Suse/etc systems. Those binaries are being used only by those using those distributions. If you download the nmap source from sourceforge - you really ARE using what's being used by everyone else. You're using the nmap source code used to compile binaries on Debian systems, RedHat systems, *BSD systems, Solaris, you name it. You're staying true to the original author's source - and using what everyone else had to use to get theirs running on their platform.
To each their own. That's what my original point all boiled down to. People that complain about the vast variety of distributions and go off like all distributions should be some sort of dumbed-down easy to use desktop OS just don't get it.
Slackware is for those who know what their sins are.
My sins are all approved.
From the "Bob" Apocryphon:
1. Puma Suckling
2. Dancing whilst fondling one's crotch
3. Unrepentant Urination
4. Wog Dalking
5. Guilt Toting
6. Penis Painting
7. Nixon Nonvoting
10. Bunsen Burning
24. Douche Gargling
25. Rabbit Rooting
28. Piss Walloping
40. Premarital Saxaphoning
53. Fangle Twangling
62. Flexohallucinating
68. Boner Honing
Yup, I'm good.
http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/revxouts5.html
"Ubuntu ate my computer" is a great phrase. I've got to figure out how to work it into daily conversation ;-)
Well, I successfully found a way to work "circus midgets ate my balls" into most of my daily conversations - so the Ubuntu line shouldn't be too difficult.
"Slackware sucks, it has no package manager."
"Slackware sucks, it takes so much time to get an uber elite desktop with avant and spinning cubes."
"Slackware sucks, it's so much harder to install than Ubuntu."
"Slackware sucks, you spend way more time on the CLI than other distros."
There are still some of us left that don't think the primary goal of every linux distro is to become a clone of the Windows desktop. There are less and less of us left that want to kick the hell out of anyone that thinks the command line should go away or be used as little as possible. Slackware is what it is - a robust linux system that tries to be as unix-like as possible.
If you want your hand held for you, and you don't understand what *nix truly is and can do and don't really care - if all you want is a simple drop-in replacement for Windows - go download Ubuntu. Each distribution achieves a different goal. THAT's the real beauty of linux, not its potential to become "grandma's operating system".
Free software would benefit greatly if "Helios" and Roy Schestowitz beat each other into dumb oblivion
Hear hear.
However, COLA is still one of the groups that entertains me most. Where would I go to get my 15 minutes of side-splitting laughter without Roy and his hillarious flamefest of a usenet group?
The kicker was the 150 hours of community service I had to put in to pay for the time (of 'computer professionals' who were worth a lot more money than I was) it took to bring them back online.
And just think - since most likely all they had to do was reboot the damned things, what you were really putting in your "sweat equity" to pay for was their time to go back and fix their own mistakes, since they obviously hadn't done their jobs right in the first place.
However, this brings up an important rule of thumb: Don't pen test something that you don't have permission to pen test, unless you've accepted that you will be prosecuted if caught. There are a lot of idiot admins out there watching their logs ready to point fingers the moment they see a port scan... not because they're concerned about security, but because "hackers" make excellent scapegoats for incompetent admins.
I always roll my eyes when I hear someone complain about nmap "crashing a system". This should be common sense. If the target crashed simply from being nmapped or scanned from the outside - the target is obviously a turd of a system.
Do you want to develop KDE apps? How about GTK apps? Do you want to submit kernel patches, or create system utilities?
You may want to be more specific, however - C, C++, Perl and Python are pretty much the norm.
For Project I use OpenProj from Projity. I use Thunderbird for all of my mail - calendar working with Exchange via WebDAV.