You fall into the same trap as everyone else. A stable binary interface doesn't == closed source drivers unless you think that the lack of a stable binary interface prevents closed source drivers. If you do I suggest you look at ATI and NVidia. I have said time and time again that if ATI produces good FOSS drivers I will drop NVidia tomorrow. I am willing to support people that support FOSS. What I don't like is people trying too cram their ideal down my throat and then making up things like "It will hurt performance".
I don't like is this political game with drivers. A good example of how a stable binary interface would help is in installing on a new system. If the network I am using hasn't made it into the the kernel of the distro I am installing I am in a world of hurt. Maybe it has made it to the repository already but without a network how the heck am I going to get on the Internet to run apt-get, yum, or yast? What if the driver is for my SATA or RAID card? I don't care if the driver is outdated if I can get my system installed and then download the updated drivers. That should be part of the install. With a binary interface the manufacture could offer the driver on a disk. Right now that really isn't an option. The lack of a stable binary interface hasn't stopped binary closed source drivers on Linux. It has only made it harder for the casual user to install Linux.
If the FOSS community really wants to encourage FOSS drivers I say start a certification program. I would love to have the option to buy hardware that was certified tow work with Linux without guess if that network card or webcam uses a supported chipset. Right now some hardware people are getting a "free ride" just because they use a chipset that some Kernel developer happened to write a driver for. It could even be a revenue stream for OSL. But for that to happen there needs to be a stable binary driver interface so they can stick the bloody drivers on a disk in the box.
1. The kernel has a stable driver api. I would highly suggest that the you don't write drivers that violate that API. 2. The kernel doesn't have a stable binary driver interface. 3. A stable binary driver interface doesn't make it harder for the programmer. It makes it a little harder for the the kernel developers because it is a new feature that must be written and debugged just like any other feature.
3. We don't want closed source device drivers, if you do then stick to Windows or OSX.
A stable binary driver interface doesn't mean enable closed source drivers. Linux already has closed source drivers. ATI, NVidia... So too late most Linux desktops are running closed source drivers. A stable binary interface just means that you can stick a binary driver on a disk and it will work. Not having a stable binary interface is just a political game to make closed source drivers harder on the end user. It hasn't stopped them it just made them a tiny pain to use. So it hurts the user not the manufacture. Is that the GNU way? Make things hard on the end user so they pick the manufactures follow your dogma? That is just great. As I have pointed out a stable binary driver interface would be a benfit for user even if the driver was FOSS! The hardware manufacture could include a driver disk with the hardware with the driver! And who is "we" AC?
"s for the legality issue, if this is a for home media player computer, I'd say "stuff it" to the law. " That is all fine and good but it means that the people makeing the distro can not INCLUDE the files on the CD. You have to hunt it down and install it yourself. Not a problem for most people on slashdot but still a problem.
As to the comment on 64bit OSs... Can I view flash sites on Vista64? Yes I can... That needs to be fixed in windows.
Well the list is typical I am afraid. 1. No 64 bit Flash. Or the lack of support in the X64 version of Firefox for 32 bit plug ins. 2. You can not watch DVDs you buy at the store with out breaking the law... Thank you US government... 3. Drivers specifically the fact that it is IMPOSIBLE for a manufacture to put a binary linux driver on a disk and stick in the box with his product.
The first part the Linux community really can not do a lot about. I guess that the distros could ship the 32 bit version of Firefox as the default until Adobe catches up.
The second issue is a legal fiction and can only be fixed by lawyers... And that is never a good state of affairs.
The third is my least favorite problem because it could at least be helped by the kernel developers. If they would just put in a stable binary driver interface then it would be possible to put drivers an a CD. Currently they don't want to put one in because they feel it would encourage closed source drivers. They will use excuses about performance but the simple truth is it is all about politics. This article was a great example. The new network adapter didn't have a driver in distro. In this case the driver hadn't made it to the kernel yet. Even if the manufacture had produced a FOSS driver there would be no way to put it on the CD. There would be no way of knowing if it would work with the users kernel. They would have put a bunch of source code on the disk and maybe a script to compile it... If the user has a development system installed and the right headerfiles... I hate technical problems caused by politics.
I never said it was desirable. What I said is it wasn't all bad for everyone and everything. That is what bugs me. Yes it will be bad for some people and for some species. It will be good for other. Just like forest fires, floods, and even volcanic eruptions.
For me personally global warming is a bad thing. I am all for it not going on. I think it is dumb to build anymore coal fired plants. I am all for building more nuclear plants, and for using solar and wind to supplement our current power grid.
But the fact is the Earth has been warmer in the past and it had an extremely rich but very different biosphere. Climate change isn't a loose loose situation. For those villages that suffer because of melting permafrost it will be a negative. For the people slightly to the south that will have a longer growing season it will be good. Think of how rich the soil of the arctic would be if it wasn't frozen? Think of how well plant live could grow in the long arctic summers? Yes it may be a very different biosphere but it will still be full of life.
Yea I want see global warming stopped but that is because it will be bad for me personally in the short term. BUT it is not a universal ecosphere disaster. It is just a change.
Well you think that global warming is bad... It is bad for some people and life forms but possibley better for other. Think about Canada and parts of Russia and China? Warming wouldn't be so bad for them. Yes Venus style warming would be bad but a little might not be so bad. And for Mars it might be very good:)
Actually Jerry Pournelle seems to really like Vista. He used to write for BYTE since the days of CP/M. He has his own website at http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/. I don't think anyone should buy Vista and frankly I think it needs a lot more work but he does seem to like it.
"I'd imagine that the reality is a lot better than a 70-30 ratio, but there's no way to be sure without a formal study." I would guess that for installing as and upgrade it is probably closer to 10-90. It would depend on what you consider a successful update. For me I would have to say that 100% of your current hardware including printer, webcams, audio, scanners... would have to be fully supported as well as all of your current software running correctly with the standard settings. So far I have seen 0 installs that meet that standard.
"How do you know that the article is indicative of the experience that the average user will get from Vista? For every article that slashdot posts bitching about Vista, I know another guy who installs it and runs it with zero problems." Humm... And how many people is that? Ten maybe it is a small sample at best. I have read news stories about how easy it was to install Vista. So far in the media it is running close to 70-30 with 70% of the people having problems. That ratio is terrible. It should be closer to 99 to 1. I worked in support and I had to keep reminding people not to recommend things just because it worked for them. We took a few thousand calls a day so I explained to them that if there was a one in a thousand chance that their personal recommended thing would cause a big problem we would hear about it three times a day.
That is the point of my comment. Most of the troops that fight in a war do not die. That doesn't mean that it is safe or even a good idea.
I know of no one that has installed Vista with no problems. Most of the problems are related to drivers but they are still problems. A bigger question is why install Vista? It uses a lot more ram. I guess if you have a lot of ram that you have no use for currently installed in your system then it isn't an issue. It has driver issues so your current hardware may or may not work. It is pretty but I don't see that as a huge benift. Others might but not I. Now if you are a developer then yes you better have Vista installed. If you buy a new system you may have no choice but if it is pre installed you should have a good chance that the hardware you bought will work. I would hope that someone wouldn't sell a system with broken drivers.
As far as I can tell Vista is a year too early in development or at least should allow NT/2000/XP drivers to be installed using some kind of capability layer if the user wants.
As far as complaining about Linux. Well yes you can as long as you work out the grief vs cost ratio. If you paid nothing for Linux then well it is a lot more value for your money than Vista is.
All kidding aside I have posted more than once about the stupid religious arguments preventing Linux binary drivers. The lack of a stable binary driver interface in Linux is a problem. Hardware manufactures can not include a binary driver in the package with the hardware because they will never know when the interface will change! Source code drivers while nice for people like me will not solve the grandma test. My mother would never feel good about./configure, make, sudo make install. I will also state that I have had fewer problems installing Linux than Windows over the past few years. I may just be lucky or I may know what I am doing more than the average person but that is how it has worked out for me.
But you pay for VISTA. Any problems are too many for a nothing but pretty, expensive update.
"Ok, so the Department of Transportation can't make a business case for it. Big deal. " Oh yes it is. The US government is Microsoft's biggest single customer.
Yea your company means a lot more than some the local hardware store to Microsoft but the US Government + it's contractors are far more important. First the DOT next.... The DOD maybe?
I kind of thought that ssh had replaced telnet a long time ago. Then again on a server maybe nothing should be turned on by default.
Re:My Vista Install
on
Is Vista a Trap?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
And people survived trench warfare but that is no reason to throw a mustard gas party.
The simple truth is that right now most people will get zero benefit from Vista. And for some people they will actually loose functionality that they currently have.
"Well, I'm sure many people would have liked to pay $11 more for a Ford Pinto that didn't pose as big a risk of a fiery death, but hey, apparently, you can't please everyone." Actually the Pinto as a fire hazard was way over blown. It was actually statistically no worse than any other care of it's size. In fact the Datsan 210 had a much higher fatality rate than the Pinto. The Pinto just made the news.
SGI is interesting but I seem to remember that they dropped IRIX and are going to Linux everywhere. They also have some really nice expensive systems that I doubt that many hobbyist have sitting around. In fact if you go to their home page you will see them right on the front page and yes they run Linux. People want to run Linux on their servers and HPC clusters. If you want to sell servers and HPC clusters that run Linux you better make sure that Linux supports all the cool stuff that sets you apart from a bunch of Intel white boxes. The fastest way to do that is to write it yourself.
Why is it shocking. Red Hat, IBM, and Novell hope to make a lot of money from Linux. Then you have the expensive systems that use Linux Intel and HP are still hopping that the Itantium will work out in the end and frankly Linux is the big OS for the Itantium. Not to many hobbiest have an Itantium sitting around so Intel and HP probably contribute a lot of code for the Itantium port. IBM sells a lot of Power systems that run Linux so they probably contributed a lot of code to support the new Power6. Not to mention the the 360/370/Zmachine port. Then you have Mips contributing for the embedded market. Linux is now big business.
Could this be the start of some really good opensource drivers for ATI cards? Just how much of X and OpenGL could they offload on this card? What Theora, Ogg, Speex, or Divx encoding and decoding? I know it is a radical idea but since they are optimized for graphics and graphics like operations why not use them for that?
The sad thing is Yes they do. Often they use many client server/database programs written in shudder VisualBasic. Often the company completely depends on them. For example in my office we depend on Goldmine, USP Shipping software and a number of small programs what we developed in house using Java. We chose Java to make it easy to move to Linux or the Mac but we still depend on a few Windows programs for our day to day operation.
Except when your competition is selling many more systmes and is 100% sold out all the time. I still can not find a Wii for sale. I have no problem finding PS3s. Then add in that that your competition is making a lot more per system sold than you are and it actually does look pretty ugly.
No he didn't. TTL stands for transistor to transistor logic. Guess what, transistors are semiconductors. The first version of the APS-101 used core memory, which doesn't use semiconductors while the s model moved to using semiconductor based memory what you and I call RAM. It was a great example of reading the wikipedia and posting without really understanding what it means. Or it was a typo, which goodness knows I have made many of on slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
You fall into the same trap as everyone else. A stable binary interface doesn't == closed source drivers unless you think that the lack of a stable binary interface prevents closed source drivers. If you do I suggest you look at ATI and NVidia.
I have said time and time again that if ATI produces good FOSS drivers I will drop NVidia tomorrow. I am willing to support people that support FOSS. What I don't like is people trying too cram their ideal down my throat and then making up things like "It will hurt performance".
I don't like is this political game with drivers.
A good example of how a stable binary interface would help is in installing on a new system.
If the network I am using hasn't made it into the the kernel of the distro I am installing I am in a world of hurt. Maybe it has made it to the repository already but without a network how the heck am I going to get on the Internet to run apt-get, yum, or yast?
What if the driver is for my SATA or RAID card? I don't care if the driver is outdated if I can get my system installed and then download the updated drivers. That should be part of the install.
With a binary interface the manufacture could offer the driver on a disk. Right now that really isn't an option.
The lack of a stable binary interface hasn't stopped binary closed source drivers on Linux. It has only made it harder for the casual user to install Linux.
If the FOSS community really wants to encourage FOSS drivers I say start a certification program. I would love to have the option to buy hardware that was certified tow work with Linux without guess if that network card or webcam uses a supported chipset. Right now some hardware people are getting a "free ride" just because they use a chipset that some Kernel developer happened to write a driver for. It could even be a revenue stream for OSL. But for that to happen there needs to be a stable binary driver interface so they can stick the bloody drivers on a disk in the box.
1. The kernel has a stable driver api. I would highly suggest that the you don't write drivers that violate that API.
2. The kernel doesn't have a stable binary driver interface.
3. A stable binary driver interface doesn't make it harder for the programmer. It makes it a little harder for the the kernel developers because it is a new feature that must be written and debugged just like any other feature.
3. We don't want closed source device drivers, if you do then stick to Windows or OSX.
... So too late most Linux desktops are running closed source drivers.
A stable binary driver interface doesn't mean enable closed source drivers. Linux already has closed source drivers. ATI, NVidia
A stable binary interface just means that you can stick a binary driver on a disk and it will work.
Not having a stable binary interface is just a political game to make closed source drivers harder on the end user. It hasn't stopped them it just made them a tiny pain to use. So it hurts the user not the manufacture. Is that the GNU way? Make things hard on the end user so they pick the manufactures follow your dogma? That is just great. As I have pointed out a stable binary driver interface would be a benfit for user even if the driver was FOSS! The hardware manufacture could include a driver disk with the hardware with the driver!
And who is "we" AC?
"s for the legality issue, if this is a for home media player computer, I'd say "stuff it" to the law. "
That is all fine and good but it means that the people makeing the distro can not INCLUDE the files on the CD. You have to hunt it down and install it yourself.
Not a problem for most people on slashdot but still a problem.
As to the comment on 64bit OSs... Can I view flash sites on Vista64? Yes I can... That needs to be fixed in windows.
Well the list is typical I am afraid.
1. No 64 bit Flash. Or the lack of support in the X64 version of Firefox for 32 bit plug ins.
2. You can not watch DVDs you buy at the store with out breaking the law... Thank you US government...
3. Drivers specifically the fact that it is IMPOSIBLE for a manufacture to put a binary linux driver on a disk and stick in the box with his product.
The first part the Linux community really can not do a lot about. I guess that the distros could ship the 32 bit version of Firefox as the default until Adobe catches up.
The second issue is a legal fiction and can only be fixed by lawyers... And that is never a good state of affairs.
The third is my least favorite problem because it could at least be helped by the kernel developers. If they would just put in a stable binary driver interface then it would be possible to put drivers an a CD. Currently they don't want to put one in because they feel it would encourage closed source drivers. They will use excuses about performance but the simple truth is it is all about politics.
This article was a great example. The new network adapter didn't have a driver in distro. In this case the driver hadn't made it to the kernel yet. Even if the manufacture had produced a FOSS driver there would be no way to put it on the CD. There would be no way of knowing if it would work with the users kernel. They would have put a bunch of source code on the disk and maybe a script to compile it... If the user has a development system installed and the right headerfiles...
I hate technical problems caused by politics.
I never said it was desirable. What I said is it wasn't all bad for everyone and everything.
That is what bugs me. Yes it will be bad for some people and for some species. It will be good for other. Just like forest fires, floods, and even volcanic eruptions.
For me personally global warming is a bad thing. I am all for it not going on. I think it is dumb to build anymore coal fired plants. I am all for building more nuclear plants, and for using solar and wind to supplement our current power grid.
But the fact is the Earth has been warmer in the past and it had an extremely rich but very different biosphere. Climate change isn't a loose loose situation. For those villages that suffer because of melting permafrost it will be a negative. For the people slightly to the south that will have a longer growing season it will be good.
Think of how rich the soil of the arctic would be if it wasn't frozen? Think of how well plant live could grow in the long arctic summers?
Yes it may be a very different biosphere but it will still be full of life.
Yea I want see global warming stopped but that is because it will be bad for me personally in the short term. BUT it is not a universal ecosphere disaster. It is just a change.
SO STOP PUTTING WORDS INTO MY MOUTH!
Well you think that global warming is bad... It is bad for some people and life forms but possibley better for other. :)
Think about Canada and parts of Russia and China?
Warming wouldn't be so bad for them.
Yes Venus style warming would be bad but a little might not be so bad. And for Mars it might be very good
But for the Wii. The Wii Mote could be the perfect interface for MM:)
I was thinking more about Office than windows.
If the US Gov ever went to OpenOffice people in Redmond would be jumping out of windows.
Actually Jerry Pournelle seems to really like Vista. He used to write for BYTE since the days of CP/M.
He has his own website at http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/. I don't think anyone should buy Vista and frankly I think it needs a lot more work but he does seem to like it.
My point is I am hoping that this opening up of the GPU might lead to FOSS drivers for those cards.
I use the Nvidia cards on my Linux machines
"I'd imagine that the reality is a lot better than a 70-30 ratio, but there's no way to be sure without a formal study."
I would guess that for installing as and upgrade it is probably closer to 10-90. It would depend on what you consider a successful update.
For me I would have to say that 100% of your current hardware including printer, webcams, audio, scanners... would have to be fully supported as well as all of your current software running correctly with the standard settings.
So far I have seen 0 installs that meet that standard.
"How do you know that the article is indicative of the experience that the average user will get from Vista? For every article that slashdot posts bitching about Vista, I know another guy who installs it and runs it with zero problems."
./configure, make, sudo make install.
Humm... And how many people is that? Ten maybe it is a small sample at best. I have read news stories about how easy it was to install Vista. So far in the media it is running close to 70-30 with 70% of the people having problems.
That ratio is terrible. It should be closer to 99 to 1.
I worked in support and I had to keep reminding people not to recommend things just because it worked for them. We took a few thousand calls a day so I explained to them that if there was a one in a thousand chance that their personal recommended thing would cause a big problem we would hear about it three times a day.
That is the point of my comment. Most of the troops that fight in a war do not die. That doesn't mean that it is safe or even a good idea.
I know of no one that has installed Vista with no problems. Most of the problems are related to drivers but they are still problems. A bigger question is why install Vista?
It uses a lot more ram. I guess if you have a lot of ram that you have no use for currently installed in your system then it isn't an issue.
It has driver issues so your current hardware may or may not work.
It is pretty but I don't see that as a huge benift. Others might but not I.
Now if you are a developer then yes you better have Vista installed. If you buy a new system you may have no choice but if it is pre installed you should have a good chance that the hardware you bought will work. I would hope that someone wouldn't sell a system with broken drivers.
As far as I can tell Vista is a year too early in development or at least should allow NT/2000/XP drivers to be installed using some kind of capability layer if the user wants.
As far as complaining about Linux. Well yes you can as long as you work out the grief vs cost ratio. If you paid nothing for Linux then well it is a lot more value for your money than Vista is.
All kidding aside I have posted more than once about the stupid religious arguments preventing Linux binary drivers. The lack of a stable binary driver interface in Linux is a problem. Hardware manufactures can not include a binary driver in the package with the hardware because they will never know when the interface will change! Source code drivers while nice for people like me will not solve the grandma test. My mother would never feel good about
I will also state that I have had fewer problems installing Linux than Windows over the past few years. I may just be lucky or I may know what I am doing more than the average person but that is how it has worked out for me.
But you pay for VISTA. Any problems are too many for a nothing but pretty, expensive update.
"Ok, so the Department of Transportation can't make a business case for it. Big deal. "
Oh yes it is.
The US government is Microsoft's biggest single customer.
Yea your company means a lot more than some the local hardware store to Microsoft but the US Government + it's contractors are far more important.
First the DOT next.... The DOD maybe?
Why have telnetd on the system at all?
I kind of thought that ssh had replaced telnet a long time ago.
Then again on a server maybe nothing should be turned on by default.
And people survived trench warfare but that is no reason to throw a mustard gas party.
The simple truth is that right now most people will get zero benefit from Vista. And for some people they will actually loose functionality that they currently have.
But that is closed source. What about for FOSS?
"Well, I'm sure many people would have liked to pay $11 more for a Ford Pinto that didn't pose as big a risk of a fiery death, but hey, apparently, you can't please everyone."
Actually the Pinto as a fire hazard was way over blown. It was actually statistically no worse than any other care of it's size. In fact the Datsan 210 had a much higher fatality rate than the Pinto.
The Pinto just made the news.
SGI is interesting but I seem to remember that they dropped IRIX and are going to Linux everywhere. They also have some really nice expensive systems that I doubt that many hobbyist have sitting around.
In fact if you go to their home page you will see them right on the front page and yes they run Linux.
People want to run Linux on their servers and HPC clusters. If you want to sell servers and HPC clusters that run Linux you better make sure that Linux supports all the cool stuff that sets you apart from a bunch of Intel white boxes.
The fastest way to do that is to write it yourself.
Why is it shocking. Red Hat, IBM, and Novell hope to make a lot of money from Linux.
Then you have the expensive systems that use Linux
Intel and HP are still hopping that the Itantium will work out in the end and frankly Linux is the big OS for the Itantium. Not to many hobbiest have an Itantium sitting around so Intel and HP probably contribute a lot of code for the Itantium port.
IBM sells a lot of Power systems that run Linux so they probably contributed a lot of code to support the new Power6. Not to mention the the 360/370/Zmachine port.
Then you have Mips contributing for the embedded market.
Linux is now big business.
Could this be the start of some really good opensource drivers for ATI cards?
Just how much of X and OpenGL could they offload on this card?
What Theora, Ogg, Speex, or Divx encoding and decoding?
I know it is a radical idea but since they are optimized for graphics and graphics like operations why not use them for that?
The sad thing is Yes they do.
Often they use many client server/database programs written in shudder VisualBasic.
Often the company completely depends on them.
For example in my office we depend on Goldmine, USP Shipping software and a number of small programs what we developed in house using Java. We chose Java to make it easy to move to Linux or the Mac but we still depend on a few Windows programs for our day to day operation.
Except when your competition is selling many more systmes and is 100% sold out all the time. I still can not find a Wii for sale. I have no problem finding PS3s. Then add in that that your competition is making a lot more per system sold than you are and it actually does look pretty ugly.
No he didn't.
TTL stands for transistor to transistor logic. Guess what, transistors are semiconductors. The first version of the APS-101 used core memory, which doesn't use semiconductors while the s model moved to using semiconductor based memory what you and I call RAM.
It was a great example of reading the wikipedia and posting without really understanding what it means. Or it was a typo, which goodness knows I have made many of on slashdot.
Sorry that was a typo on my part I meant to say I have not been charged a cent. I agree with you :)